Vondelpark Openluchttheater & the Ponds

Why is it significant?

Find a spot by the water and just listen for a moment. A cyclist's bell, children shrieking somewhere on a lawn, ducks squabbling... and then, from the treetops, a harsh, almost tropical screech. Look up. Something lime green is flashing between the branches.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Find a spot by the water and just listen for a moment. A cyclist's bell, children shrieking somewhere on a lawn, ducks squabbling... and then, from the treetops, a harsh, almost tropical screech. Look up. Something lime green is flashing between the branches.

Those are rose-ringed parakeets, birds whose ancestors came from Africa and South Asia. A few escaped or released pets settled in the Vondelpark in the 1970s, survived the Dutch winters against all expectations, and multiplied. Today their descendants nest in old tree holes all over Amsterdam, and the park is still one of their strongholds.

Now look along the bank. That tall grey bird standing perfectly still is a grey heron, and Amsterdam's herons are famous for their nerve. They wait outside fishmongers' stalls at the markets and stalk along canal edges a metre from passing tourists. Watch the water, too, for black cormorants drying their wings like little umbrellas, and for coots building floating nests out of twigs and, sometimes, plastic.

Beside the ponds stands the open-air theatre, a stage among the trees where, on summer days, you can wander in for music, dance, cabaret or children's theatre without a ticket. The performers compete with the parakeets, and the parakeets often win. This has always been a park of freedom: in the early 1970s, young travellers from all over the world slept here in their sleeping bags, and for a while the city simply let them. The Vondelpark became a kind of open-air hostel.

All of this water is part of the original design. In a park dug out of wet peat, ponds were not only a picture: they gathered the water that would otherwise have turned the lawns into marsh. Every curve of bank and every gentle rise here was shaped by hand. Keep walking south-west along the water, and look out for a strange grey concrete shape on the lawn. It is signed by the most famous artist of the twentieth century.