Waterlooplein: The Market of the Jodenbuurt
Why is it significant?
Wander in among the stalls for a minute: leather jackets, bicycle bells, old cameras, vinyl records, tulip bulbs, a heap of second-hand everything. The Waterlooplein flea market is one of the most famous in Europe, and one of the scruffiest, and Amsterdammers love it for exactly that.
Key Facts
| Place | Waterlooplein: The Market of the Jodenbuurt |
|---|---|
| Address | Waterlooplein, 1011 PG Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.36840, 4.90180 |
| Part of Walk | Mokum's Lost Quarter: The Jewish Heart of Amsterdam and the Plantage |
| Generated | Generated |
Wander in among the stalls for a minute: leather jackets, bicycle bells, old cameras, vinyl records, tulip bulbs, a heap of second-hand everything. The Waterlooplein flea market is one of the most famous in Europe, and one of the scruffiest, and Amsterdammers love it for exactly that.
The square itself is younger than it looks. In 1882 two canals here, the Houtgracht and the Leprozengracht, were filled in, and the open space that appeared became the Waterlooplein. Within a few years the street traders of the Jewish quarter, who had crowded the nearby streets with their carts, moved onto it, and the market was born.
Before the war this was a market of the Jodenbuurt, the Jewish quarter, loud with Yiddish and Amsterdam slang and the cries of sellers. Most of the traders were poor Jewish families, selling rags, fish, fruit, old iron and second-hand clothes. The Amsterdam dialect still carries their words: mazzel for luck, gajes for riff-raff, and many more, borrowed from Yiddish and Hebrew on squares like this one.
Then the war came. From 1941 the occupiers squeezed Jewish traders out with one decree after another, and from 1942 they were deported, family after family, until the market fell silent. In the bitter Hunger Winter of 1944 to 1945, the empty houses of the deported were stripped of their wooden beams, stairs and floors by freezing neighbours looking for fuel, and many collapsed. After the war, much of what was left of the old quarter was demolished.
The great building behind you, city hall and opera house in one, rose on this ground in the 1980s, after years of protest under the slogan Stopera, which is still its nickname. The market came back, and the stalls are still here, though the voices calling out the prices have changed. Now cross the square northeast, past the Mozes en Aäronkerk, and follow the canal towards the old island of Uilenburg.