Dam Square & The Royal Palace: Built on Thirteen Thousand Trees

Why is it significant?

Stand right here in the open expanse of Dam Square and look across at the classical sandstone facade of the Royal Palace. You are standing on the literal birthplace of the city.

Key Facts

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Stand right here in the open expanse of Dam Square and look across at the classical sandstone facade of the Royal Palace. You are standing on the literal birthplace of the city. Around the year twelve seventy, local fishermen built a wooden dam across the mouth of the River Amstel to keep the salty waters of the Zuiderzee from flooding their modest peat-bog settlement, giving birth to the name Amstel-redamme, which evolved into Amsterdam. How does this monumental palace stay upright on a muddy quagmire? The engineering secret lies completely underground. When architect Jacob van Campen designed the building in sixteen forty-eight as the new Town Hall during the Golden Age, master builders drove exactly thirteen thousand six hundred and fifty-nine Norway spruce timber piles deep into the saturated marshland to strike firm sand. Dutch schoolchildren still memorize that number with an old rhyme: three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, put a one in front and a nine at the end! Crowned by the bronze figure of Atlas carrying the celestial globe on his shoulders, it was hailed as the Eighth Wonder of the World, celebrating an empire whose merchant fleet was larger than all other European navies combined. In eighteen zero-eight, Napoleon's brother Louis Bonaparte took over the building, transforming the democratic city hall into a royal palace. Today, as trams ring past and street musicians play, Dam Square remains the historic anchor of Dutch freedom.