Fodor's Expert Review De Nieuwe Kerk
De Nieuwe Kerk (The New Church), which celebrated its 600th birthday in 2010, is a soaring late-Gothic structure whose tower was never completed because the authorities blew all their money on the city hall (now the Royal Palace) next door. Check out the magnificently sculpted oak pulpit by Albert Vinckenbrinck, constructed after the Great Fire of 1645. It took him 15 years to complete, although there is now a bit missing: the scales from a Lady of Justice were an impulsively generous gift to the Canadians, who helped to liberate Amsterdam. Other features include the unmarked grave of the poet and playwright Van den Vondel (the "Dutch Shakespeare") and Rombout Verhulst's extravagantly sculpted eulogy to naval hero Admiral Michiel de Ruyter (you can peer through a glass to see his actual coffin in the crypt).
