Begijnhof

A courtyard below the street

The Begijnhof is the only inner courtyard in Amsterdam that was founded in the Middle Ages. It sits inside the Singel, the innermost canal. Once you are through the gate, the street noise drops away. The ground here is at medieval street level, about a metre lower than the rest of the old centre. That is how far the city has risen around it.

It was once ringed by water: the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, the Spui and a ditch called the Begijnensloot. The backs of the houses stood right on the water. Today 105 women live here, so keep your voice down and treat it as what it is, a place where people have their front doors.

Women who were not nuns

Nobody knows exactly when it began. A document from 1346 mentions a single "beghynhuys". A courtyard is first named in 1389, probably after the Miracle of 1345 raised the city's religious standing. You can see the column that remembers that miracle a couple of minutes away.

The beguines lived like a religious community. They vowed chastity and went to Mass every day. But they were not nuns, and they could leave at any time to marry.

In 1578 Amsterdam turned Calvinist, and the Begijnhof was the only Catholic institution allowed to stay. The reason was simple: the houses belonged to the beguines privately. The chapel was a different matter. It stood empty for about thirty years and was then handed to English Presbyterians. The last beguine, Sister Antonia, died on 23 May 1971, aged 84.

What to look for

Start with Het Houten Huys at number 34. It has a wooden front and back, stone side walls and an upper floor that juts out over the street. Sources date it to about 1420 or about 1528, so the exact age is debated. Either way, it is among the oldest wooden houses in the city. The only other one left in the centre is on the Zeedijk.

Then look at the rest of the houses. There are 47 of them, mostly with 17th- and 18th-century fronts. Behind eighteen of those fronts is a Gothic wooden frame. Gable stones are everywhere, and many are clearly Catholic in theme.

The old gate on the Begijnensteeg side dates from 1574. The stone above it shows Saint Ursula, patron saint of the Amsterdam beguines.

The English Reformed Church is the old beguine chapel. Some of its pulpit panels were designed by Piet Mondrian. Directly opposite, two ordinary-looking houses hide a Catholic church. Philips Vingboons converted them in 1671, when the city demanded that Catholics worship out of sight. From the outside it still does not look like a church. It became the Miracle Church in 1908.

One story belongs to the paving. The beguine Cornelia Arens died in 1654 and asked to be buried in the court's gutter, because she thought the chapel had been desecrated. Legend says she was first buried inside, but her coffin kept turning up in the gutter until she got her way.