Schreierstoren: The Tower of Farewells
Why is it significant?
In front of you, where the Geldersekade canal meets the harbour, crouches a squat round tower of dark brick with a little pointed cap. It looks almost too modest for the stories people have hung on it.
Key Facts
| Place | Schreierstoren: The Tower of Farewells |
|---|---|
| Address | Prins Hendrikkade 94-95, 1012 AE Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.37640, 4.90220 |
| Part of Walk | Spice, Ships and Shadows: Amsterdam's Golden Age Harbour and the Dutch East India Company |
| Generated | Generated |
In front of you, where the Geldersekade canal meets the harbour, crouches a squat round tower of dark brick with a little pointed cap. It looks almost too modest for the stories people have hung on it.
The Schreierstoren was built around 1480 as part of Amsterdam's medieval city wall, guarding the corner where the wall met the water. Its name has produced a famous legend: that this was where the wives of sailors stood weeping, schreien, as their husbands sailed away, perhaps for ever. A carved stone set into the wall keeps that tale alive. The less romantic explanation is that the name comes from an old Dutch word for a sharp corner, which is exactly what the wall made here.
Look for the bronze plaque on the wall. On 4 April 1609 an Englishman named Henry Hudson sailed from Amsterdam in a small ship called the Halve Maen, the Half Moon, hired by the VOC to find a northern route to Asia over the top of Russia. The ice stopped him. So he ignored his orders, turned west across the Atlantic, and sailed up a broad river on the American coast. That river now bears his name, and the Dutch claim it gave rise to New Amsterdam... later known as New York.
And the legend of weeping wives held a hard truth. Over the two centuries of the VOC, something like a million people sailed to Asia on its ships, soldiers and sailors, many of them poor young men from Germany and Scandinavia. The voyage took the better part of a year, and scurvy, fever and shipwreck took a terrible toll. Fewer than half ever saw this harbour again.
In the Golden Age the harbour was right here, a forest of masts in front of the city, before the station was built on artificial islands in the nineteenth century and cut Amsterdam off from its water. Now follow the Prins Hendrikkade east, keeping the water on your left, to a building that juts out like the bow of a ship, crawling with sea creatures.