Find out where to stay and what to see in Amsterdam with our Insider Advice
In the 17th century, Amsterdam was the most exciting city in Europe, if not the world. Dutch exploration and domination of trade routes were at their height, and the enormous wealth generated by the boatloads of precious silks, spices and jewels brought into the port city helped spark a century-long golden age of artistic, scientific, philosophical and commercial creativity. A frenzy of building transformed the landscape: three grand canals were carved out, and as hundreds of stately residences rose alongside them to house the newly rich merchants, Rembrandt van Rijn busily attended to commissions to paint their portraits. A famously tolerant government made Amsterdam a refuge for Jews and French Huguenots fleeing persecution, thus swelling its intellectual and business classes and lending it a dynamic, sophisticated air.
Fast-forward to today's Amsterdam and you'll find some of that same synergy of imaginative forces at work — enough, perhaps, to make this the year the city finds its way back onto your must-visit list. An overdue polishing of the beautifully preserved historic center is under way, while an astonishing spate of innovative modern buildings is revitalizing the city's fringes. Rembrandt may be gone — though you'd never know it, with Amsterdam reveling in a yearlong celebration of his 400th birthday — but Dutch fashion and home-furnishings designers are thriving, and their work is gathered in a few extraordinary shops that surely must be why container shipping was invented.
The renowned Dutch open-mindedness is still in evidence, most noticeably in Amsterdam's red-light district and smoky "coffee shops," which, despite occasional rumblings, remain legal. It has also attracted a vibrant assortment of nationalities, 173 at last count, and the city continues to shelter immigrants, understanding that they stimulate much of its contemporary culture. For the same reason, it encourages artists with generous subsidies and commissions. "Amsterdam would like to position itself as the most creative city in Europe," says Liesbeth Jansen, who has spent the past decade helping turn the Westergasfabriek, a onetime gasworks in the western part of the city, into what eventually will be an avant-garde arts complex of hip restaurants, performance spaces and artists' studios.
"For such a small city, there's an incredible amount of energy now," says model turned fashion designer Analik, who has opened a shop and is scheduled to open a boutique hotel above it this fall. She attributes that energy to Amsterdam's inventive spirit and its multicultural flavor. "The big American and European expat society that lives on the canals" — and, incidentally, is buying up the coveted canal houses — "has changed the city, made it more cosmopolitan," says Taco Dibbits, the young head of the Rijksmuseum's art collections and a former director of Old Master paintings at Christie's in London. "But Amsterdam is still more relaxed than London or New York. In London, transportation is a nightmare. Here I just jump on my bicycle and I'm wherever I need to be in five minutes."
Over the past few decades, Amsterdam's population has expanded, fueling the present building boom. One explanation is an influx of foreign companies attracted by the low Dutch tax rates. Many have set up shop in the Zuidas, a southern district that Michael Graves, Rafael Viñoly and other architects will make over into a huge, carefully planned office-cum-residential community starting by the decade's end.
In its final stages is the fifteen-year reinvention of the Eastern Docklands. Once the center of Dutch shipping, later a wasteland of deserted warehouses, this harborside area and its man-made islands are today a showcase for modern architecture and urban planning, displaying new canal houses, cultural venues, shops, hotels and restaurants. Renzo Piano's copper-clad NeMo, the National Center for Science and Technology, rises like a verdigris ship over the harbor, and the impressive glass and steel Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ concert hall, by Dutch architecture firm 3XNielsen, recently opened. Next up: one of Europe's largest public libraries — complete with a theater and a rooftop café — by Dutch architect Jo Coenen, debuts in 2007.
Meanwhile, back in the historic center, major renovations of the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam are in the works until, respectively, 2009 and 2008, when the Stedelijk's new adjacent building will also be unveiled.
