De Waag: The 1488 Gatehouse and Rembrandt's Anatomy

Why is it significant?

Gaze up at the five fairytale brick turrets and conical tiled roofs of De Waag, standing squarely in the middle of Nieuwmarkt.

Key Facts

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Gaze up at the five fairytale brick turrets and conical tiled roofs of De Waag, standing squarely in the middle of Nieuwmarkt. Built in fourteen eighty-eight as the Sint Antoniespoort, this is the oldest surviving non-religious building in Amsterdam and the sole remaining gatehouse of the medieval defensive city wall that once ringed the settlement.

When Amsterdam expanded rapidly in the seventeenth century and demolished its old defensive walls, what saved this fortress? In sixteen seventeen, city authorities drained the surrounding moat and converted the gate into a public weighing house, or Waag, where goods over fifty pounds like cheese, tobacco, and cannonballs were officially weighed for tax levies.

The upper towers were rented out to influential trade guilds, including blacksmiths, masons, and the Guild of Surgeons. In the octagonal central tower, the surgeons established an anatomical theater. Here, in sixteen thirty-two, doctor Nicolaes Tulp performed a public dissection on the corpse of executed criminal Aris Kindt, immortalized by a twenty-six-year-old Rembrandt in his breakthrough masterpiece, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.

During the Nazi occupation of nineteen forty-one, the surrounding Nieuwmarkt square was surrounded by barbed wire by the Gestapo as a assembly point for deporting thousands of Dutch Jewish citizens. Today, candlelit outdoor cafes wrap around these brick towers, holding five centuries of triumph and sorrow.