De Herengracht

"The Gentlemen's Canal"


To my mind there have been four centers of canal culture in the history of the world: the Great Canal of China, the cities of Venice and Tenochtitlan, and the Netherlands. Recently I had the pleasure of visiting one through the city of Amsterdam.

The map, travelling south to north:

As you can see from the map, the choice of canals was an embarrassment of riches: those of the concentric "Canal Belt," the Singel, Herengracht, Keizergracht, and Prinsengracht, with many side channels and connecting canals. Riding Templar on a bicycle (high occupancy bikes are very common in Amsterdam) along the Herengracht, my host was kind enough to point out some areas of interest which sold me on this one. With limited time, I was only able to cover half of it, so I guess I'll just have to go back.

I started where the Herengracht meets Nieuwe Spiegalstraat, at the south end of which can be seen the roof of the Rijksmuseum.

I set off north along the canal, mostly on the west bank but switching opportunistically.

The ubiquitous bicycle lane.

Imperial iconography is equally ubiquitous.

A few impressions- the Herengracht is not really a working canal, and not a living canal to the extent London canals are, although on others I did see some barges. The houseboats are confined more to the western / northern part of the city, and are rarer the closer to the center. Nor are they in the British narrowboat style, but larger, more solid designs intended for wider waterways. Amsterdam's Canal Band is also much older than London's industrial canals, having been built to its modern form mostly between 1600 and 1670. Many of the buildings along the banks remain the same ones which came in with the canals. For these reasons, I focused a bit more on the canal houses than canal traffic this time.
The city is full of art, from the high medieval to Art Deco, but I wasn't expecting this:

After all, the 50th anniversary is soon.

Amsterdam's older center is mostly brick streets (the sign of a stable society?) connected by light rail, producing lovely little bridges which struck me as vaguely Eastern European.

This is where things begin to get really interesting. The first stretch was mostly late nineteenth / early twentieth century buildings, but for a section around this bend is a collection of houses which were owned by Directors of the Dutch East India Company and the like. Most were built in the seventeenth century, and you can see them starting here on the right bank, charmingly crooked. The houses of this type, I'm informed, only continue about as far as the large building in the center.

Past the bend:

Many of the buildings bear the year of their (re)construction. 1665: an interesting year in a tumultuous decade of Anglo-Dutch rivalry. The Plague struck England for the last time, the recently captured Dutch colony of Nieuw Amsterdam was renamed New York, the Duke for which the city was renamed defeated the Dutch at the Battle of Lowestoft, and the Dutch East India fleet avoided capture at the Battle of Vågen. Two years later, the Dutch orchestrated the worst defeat in Royal Navy history until the Second World War, hauling away the British flagship Royal Charles, and Charles II's coat of arms from the ship is still on display in the Rijksmuseum. Its rare for a people to have such pride in war trophies without fueling enduring antagonism,  yet Anglo-Dutch relations have been pretty smooth sailing since 1688.
Anyway, the beam with the hook at the top of the house is a clever invention for winching furniture up to higher floors. If you've ever seen a staircase in one of these houses, the rationale is clear.


This section of the Herengracht has moved on from pepper monopolies since the the seventeenth century, and now law firms are housed where Directors of the VOC once lived. Its also the headquarters for even newer businesses, which was kind of a surprise.

I admit I've played some of their games before.

 The canals which connect the main ones are interesting as well, and through this one you can see the Singel:

The older buildings have been arrested in various stages of leaning out into the street, giving the impression sometimes that the buildings are closing in above you, because they are. Braces running straight through the structures are a common sight.

The longest section of the canal came after this bend, heading almost straight north, with the houses a mix of the early seventeenth century to late nineteenth.

 The buildings also begin to get progressively taller, reaching sometimes six or more stories and with no less lean to them. With just wood, brick, and iron to work with, going above about five stories is pretty impressive.

The traffic is a bit unexceptional on this part of the canal, but this one looked like military surplus, yet the construction in the front made me think it was for canal work.

One of the best things about the Herengracht are the great cross streets and canals:

Connecting to the Keizergracht.

The Singel, visible again.

In the last stretch, the buildings are on average much older. The difference is an interesting one, and instructive about the rise of the Netherlands and its impact on culture. Contrast the simplicity of this house from 1590 with the earlier one from 1665:

The emphasis on religious poverty in the sixteenth century is pretty apparent when compared to the artistic outflowing of the 1660s. Aside from the streets, the Long Seventeenth Century seems to have echoed the Roman emperor Augustus's claim that "I found Rome a city of brick, and left it a city of marble."

Although I've seen plenty of sunken boats along the way, this was the first repurposed as a Swan's nest.

The end in sight, with a few houseboats:

 

The Herengracht ends here, splitting east and west under two bridges.

In all, its a beautiful canal with an immense amount of history, but I don't think I can say that I've fully crossed one of the four main canal centers off my list yet, so further exploration is clearly required.