Below the Surface (Rokin metro)

A museum you walk through on the way to the train

Most people reach Rokin metro station in a hurry. Slow down and look at the walls. There are display cases full of things dug out of the ground while the line was being built. Keys. Coins. Toys. A trumpet from the 17th century.

The display is called Below the Surface. It is free and takes about a quarter of an hour. It is one of the few places where you can see what Amsterdam has lost over the centuries, rather than what it has kept. Nothing here is grand, and that is the appeal. These are ordinary things that someone once owned, used and dropped.

Why the ground gives things up here

The Rokin follows the line of the old Amstel river. The city grew up where that river was dammed, and that is where the name Amsterdam comes from: a dam on the Amstel. Dam Square is a short walk away. Amsterdam began as a small fishing village in the 12th century and grew into a major world port in the 17th.

A river bed is a good place to find things. Archaeologists have already found Neolithic and Roman objects in the old Amstel bed under Damrak and Rokin. They include shards of Bell Beaker pottery, roughly 4,000 years old, and a granite grinding stone. People lived and worked along these banks long before there was a city.

So when the metro was dug under this stretch, the diggers were cutting through a very long record of daily life. The cases in the station show a small part of it.

What to look for

Start with the trumpet. A brass instrument from the 17th century dates from the Golden Age, when the city was at its richest. Try to picture who played it, and how it ended up in the ground.

Then go small. The keys are the best part. Each one once opened a door, a chest or a shop, and someone had to go home without it. The coins do the same job. The toys tell you that children played on these banks, much as they do now.

Give each case a slow look. The objects are modest, and the details only show up when you stand still. Read the labels, because they tell you what each object is.

If you are with children, ask them to pick the object they think was lost most recently, and the one they think is oldest. It makes a good game.