Free
Historic Heart of Amsterdam Walking Tour
Amsterdam audio walk Central Station → Dam Square: the Oude Kerk, Royal Palace. 32 stops, 6.5 km, on your phone.
- Tour type
- Walking
- Duration
- Distance
- 6.5 km
Audio Tours in Amsterdam
The old centre of Amsterdam is laid out as three main canals in concentric arcs, the Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht, cut inside the old moat during the 17th century. The look everyone photographs along the ring, tall brick houses tipping over the water, is not a matter of taste. Plots were taxed on the width of their frontage, so owners built narrow and tall, with the rooms running far back from the street, and the whole row stands on wooden piles driven through peat to firmer sand below. Walk the ring and the water stays close. People rent a boat for an hour or slip into the Jordaan for its smaller streets, then queue for the Rijksmuseum, where Rembrandt's Night Watch has held its own gallery since the building opened in 1885. The street food to know is raw herring, sold from stalls as a broodje haring with onions and pickle, sweetest from May to July. An audio walk follows the ring one canal at a time and explains the frontage tax and the pile-work house by house.
