Amsterdam Canals, Houseboats, and Dancing Houses

I’m actually amazed by the technological feats that went into transforming a fishing village on marshy land at the mouth of the Amstel river into the city we know today. 

That the city and its surrounding area is as below sea level as ever thus necessitating the creation and maintenance of the canals, polders, dykes, and windmills to protect from floods still blows my mind.

Here in Amsterdam, I’ve learnt that there is a method to the madness of the dancing houses and now they have my forgiveness for being so askew. Built on a peat bog, many are supported by wooden stilts while newer ones have concrete foundation deep into the earth. Some are purposefully designed to have a tilt in their façade so that when goods are hoisted into the attic they don’t crash into the windows. This gives the appearance that they are going to topple forward. This is also when I realize that there are hooks and pulleys in the decorative gables. Smart!

We visit Museum Willet-Holthuysen at Hectengracht 605 to get a glimpse of the inside of one of these canal houses. Surprisingly, there’s a garden in the back. It was built in 1685 and is slowly being restored.

There are 165 Amsterdam canals shockingly more than there are in Venice. The Grachtengordel (Canal Ring) became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2010 and this year they celebrate their 400th birthday. Happy birthday Amsterdam canals.

Traversing the canals are 1281 bridges of different shapes and sizes of which the Magere Brug (Skinny Bridge) is one of the most known. 

Lining the canals are about 2500 houseboats of different designs some of which go back at least a hundred years.