Bloemgracht: The Herengracht of the Jordaan
Why is it significant?
Stand on the bridge and look down the Bloemgracht in both directions. Taller houses, finer gables, stepped and bell-shaped, steady rows of windows, some with hoisting beams under the roof.
Key Facts
| Place | Bloemgracht: The Herengracht of the Jordaan |
|---|---|
| Address | Bloemgracht 87, 1015 TK Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.37430, 4.87970 |
| Part of Walk | Behind the Green Doors: Hidden Hofjes and Market Days of the Jordaan, Amsterdam |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand on the bridge and look down the Bloemgracht in both directions. Taller houses, finer gables, stepped and bell-shaped, steady rows of windows, some with hoisting beams under the roof. Amsterdammers call it the Herengracht of the Jordaan, the gentlemen's canal of a neighbourhood that had very few gentlemen.
Look for three houses side by side with gable stones showing a townsman, a countryman and a seaman, built in 1642 and known together as the Three Hendricks. They are the street's most famous faces. But the Bloemgracht's real secret is something you can no longer see at all.
In the seventeenth century, the Bloemgracht was home to the printing works of the Blaeu family, the greatest mapmakers of their age. Willem Jansz Blaeu was official cartographer to the Dutch East India Company, and his son Joan produced the Atlas Maior in the 1660s: hundreds of hand-coloured maps in up to a dozen volumes, the largest and most expensive book of the century. Rulers across the world received copies as diplomatic gifts. Every coastline the Dutch sailors charted ended up on paper somewhere near the canal in front of you.
And then, in 1672, a fire swept through the Blaeu business and destroyed presses, stock and engraved copper plates. It was the same year France, England and two German prince-bishops attacked the Dutch Republic, the year the Dutch still call the Disaster Year. Joan Blaeu died the following year, and the firm never recovered. The world's finest atlases had been made in a street named after flowers... and then they simply stopped.
Today the Bloemgracht is one of the calmest canals in the city, and nothing marks the spot where the presses stood. Now walk south across the Rozengracht, where Rembrandt spent his last, poor years until his death in 1669, and continue one canal further to the quiet Lauriergracht.