Montelbaanstoren & the Oudeschans
Why is it significant?
Find a spot by the canal and look across at the tower rising straight from the water's edge: a sturdy brick base, and on top, a light, almost lacy spire of wood with a clock and an open lantern, as if a fortress had put on a party hat. The base is the older half.
Key Facts
| Place | Montelbaanstoren & the Oudeschans |
|---|---|
| Address | Oudeschans 2, 1011 KX Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.37200, 4.90570 |
| Part of Walk | Spice, Ships and Shadows: Amsterdam's Golden Age Harbour and the Dutch East India Company |
| Generated | Generated |
Find a spot by the canal and look across at the tower rising straight from the water's edge: a sturdy brick base, and on top, a light, almost lacy spire of wood with a clock and an open lantern, as if a fortress had put on a party hat.
The base is the older half. The Montelbaanstoren was built in 1516, together with the canal in front of you, the Oudeschans, to defend the shipyards of the Lastage, the district outside the medieval walls where Amsterdam's ships were built and repaired. By 1606 the city had grown past it, the tower was useless for war, and Hendrick de Keyser gave it the elegant spire you see today.
Soon afterwards, the story goes, the tower began to lean towards the water, and the citizens hauled it upright again with ropes and weights. Whether or not it happened quite like that, it is a very Amsterdam problem: everything here stands on soft ground and has to be watched.
For the VOC, this was a place of departures. It is often said that sailors gathered near the tower to be taken out in smaller boats to the big East Indiamen waiting further out. Many of them had been signed up by so-called soul sellers, lodging-house keepers who fed and housed penniless recruits, then took a share of their future wages in return. A young man could leave for Asia already in debt for the bed he had slept in.
Rembrandt, who lived just a few minutes' walk away, sketched this tower, and painters have loved its reflection in the Oudeschans ever since. Today it is home to offices of the city's water authority, which feels right for a building that has spent five centuries keeping its feet out of the water. Now walk north along the canal to the harbour front on the Prins Hendrikkade, where the greatest Dutch admiral once lived.