Amsterdamse Bos

A forest made by hand

The Amsterdamse Bos looks as if it has always been here. It has not. Every hill, pond and path was planned and dug by people. The forest covers about 1,000 hectares, roughly three times the size of New York's Central Park. Most of it lies in Amstelveen, just over the city line, but Amsterdam owns and looks after it.

This is a forest for using, not only for looking at. People row, run, cycle, ride horses and picnic. The managers count around six million visits a year, and you can still find a path with nobody on it. Come with a few hours and no fixed plan.

How it came to be

Around 1900 the naturalist Jac. P. Thijsse argued that the growing city needed real countryside close by. In 1928 the city council decided to build a large public park. The designers were Cornelis van Eesteren and Jakoba Mulder. Their Boschplan, the Forest Plan, became part of the city's big expansion plan of 1935.

Before that, this was low polder and old peat meadow. Digging began on 30 April 1934, and one of the first jobs was the Bosbaan, the long rowing course. Unemployment was very high, so the forest was also a relief scheme. Between 1934 and 1940 about 20,000 jobless men worked on it, mostly with shovels and wheelbarrows. A memorial called De Kruiwagen, the Wheelbarrow, remembers them.

The war left a darker layer. The occupiers set up labour sites in and around the forest, and four of them were used for Jewish men, who were forced to work here. For many of them this came before deportation. Strips of young trees were cleared for anti-aircraft guns, and in the hunger winter of 1944 to 1945 people from the city cut wood for fuel. The city gave the park its present name in 1947. Schoolchildren planted the last trees of the original plan on the slope of the Heuvel on 25 March 1970.

What to look for

Start with the bridges. There are 116 of them, and 67 are credited to Piet Kramer, an architect of the Amsterdam School. Each is a small piece of design, with its own materials, colour and shape. Look for the little movable ball bridges, where a brightly coloured sphere works as the counterweight.

At the Bosbaan you can often see crews training. The first race here was in May 1937, and the course has hosted the World Rowing Championships twice, in 1977 and 2014. The boathouse and standing terrace beside it date from around 1936 and are a national monument.

The Cherry Blossom Park lies by the Amstelveense Poel, in the southern part. In 2000 the Japan Women's Club gave 400 Japanese cherry trees, and in spring people sit under them for hanami, the custom of watching the blossom. A black granite memorial from 2012 remembers the victims of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. The old trees are being replaced between 2025 and 2029, so it may look different from the photographs.

Then walk the quieter corners. Highland cattle and Exmoor ponies graze some of the wetter ground. There are reed beds, marshy woodland and, in season, wild orchids. Grass snakes live here, so watch the path edges on a warm day. Notice how flat and low everything is. Pumps hold the water far below the Dutch reference level.

At the Koenenkade entrance you will find the Stedenmaagd, the original 1883 statue that once stood at the entrance to the Vondelpark. In the north, the goat farm Ridammerhoeve stands on one of two emergency landing fields laid out in 1938 to 1940, after accidents near Schiphol. It has been a farm since 1988 and is an easy stop with children.