Groenburgwal

A canal with a tower at the end

The Groenburgwal is a short, calm canal that links the Raamgracht to the Amstel. It runs parallel to the Kloveniersburgwal and the Zwanenburgwal, and the tower of the Zuiderkerk stands over it. Most people walk past on the busier streets either side. Come here and you get water, old brick, a wooden drawbridge and one of the best-framed views in the centre.

The canal is free to walk along at any hour. Give it a quarter of an hour, more if you like reading facades.

Cloth, dye and a painter

Until late in the 16th century this was open ground outside the fortress by the Amstel. In 1593 the city took it in. Cloth weavers moved in. They washed, carded and spun wool, wove it, then fulled and dyed it and stretched the cloth on wooden frames to dry. The nearby Raamgracht and Verversstraat are named after that work.

In the early 17th century parts of the Amstel here were filled in, and the name Groenburgwal appeared. Green dyers were established on this stretch. The Dutch sources add that the west side, with its trees, was for living only, while the east side, the Verversgracht, was home to the blue dyers.

Around 1874 Claude Monet painted the view up the canal to the Zuiderkerk. The painting hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, so you will not find it here. But the view is still there, and it is easy to see why he chose it.

What to look for

Start with the bridges. The wooden drawbridge at the Staalstraat is the Staalmeestersbrug, bridge 227. At the Raamgracht end is an 18th-century stone arch, bridge 226. Together they give the canal its shape.

Then read the houses. At number 30, tile panels on the facade record the St. Vincentius Tusschenschool. Number 42 is Christ Church, one of the first neo-Gothic churches in the country. In 1829 part of the old cloth hall 't Staalhoff was rebuilt in that style for it, which ties the church back to the weavers.

Number 44 was built around 1650 by the silk weavers' guild as an inspection hall. In 1857 the University of Amsterdam made it a chemistry laboratory. Jacobus van 't Hoff, the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, taught and researched here from 1878 to 1891. In 2021 the building was declared National Chemical Heritage.

Number 56 dates from 1720 and is built in Louis XIV style. Four generations of the Serné family ran a costume hire business in it for about a century and a half. The Hendrik de Keyser society restored it in this century. Number 61 had painted ceilings from 1633 found inside. On the far side of the canal, the modern youth hostel wing at numbers 32 to 34 dates from 1956.

A film set for two days

In 1987 part of the canal was turned into a version of the Red Light District for two days. The film Amsterdamned needed a scene there, and filming was not allowed in the real Wallen. So the quiet Groenburgwal stood in for it. Look at it now and it is hard to imagine, which is part of its charm.

Stand where the water bends and look toward the Zuiderkerk. Brick, trees, reflections and the tower: the picture Monet painted is still here to walk into. If you want a second canal corner afterwards, the Huis aan de Drie Grachten is a three-minute walk away.