Tuschinski Theatre
Why is it significant?
Stop in the middle of Reguliersbreestraat and look up at the facade between its two towers: glazed tiles, wrought iron, swirling lettering, lanterns and carved stone, all jostling for your attention like a crowd at a premiere. Nothing in Amsterdam looks quite like it.
Key Facts
| Place | Tuschinski Theatre |
|---|---|
| Address | Reguliersbreestraat 26-34, 1017 CN Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.36650, 4.89470 |
| Part of Walk | Rembrandt's Amsterdam: The Night Watch, the Syndics & the Amstel |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop in the middle of Reguliersbreestraat and look up at the facade between its two towers: glazed tiles, wrought iron, swirling lettering, lanterns and carved stone, all jostling for your attention like a crowd at a premiere. Nothing in Amsterdam looks quite like it.
Just around the corner to the east lies Rembrandtplein, where Rembrandt has stood on his pedestal since 1852. Since 2006, the four hundredth anniversary of his birth, he has had company: a bronze version of the Night Watch, life-size figures by the Russian sculptors Mikhail Dronov and Alexander Taratynov, which people walk among and pose with. The painting that began in the Kloveniersdoelen has become something you can step into.
This building has its own remarkable story. Abraham Tuschinski was a Polish Jewish tailor who came to the Netherlands in 1904 on his way to America. He never got on the ship. He stayed, opened cinemas in Rotterdam and then dreamed bigger. He bought a run-down corner of this street, an alley so notorious it was called the Duivelshoek, the Devil's Corner, and on the twenty-eighth of October 1921 opened this theatre. The architect Hijman Louis de Jong blended the Amsterdam School with Art Deco and Art Nouveau into something theatrical and completely its own, inside and out.
The ending is a cruel one. During the German occupation, Tuschinski's theatre was taken from him and renamed. Abraham Tuschinski was deported and murdered in Auschwitz in 1942. After the war his name went back above the door, and the building has been showing films ever since.
So here your walk ends, in a dream palace built by an immigrant who refused to give up. From the flower painters to Rembrandt's late portraits, from De Keyser's towers to these painted tiles, this has been a walk about Amsterdam's appetite for beauty and the people who paid its price. Muntplein and the flower market, where you began, are just a minute's walk to the west.