Munttoren

A tower on a busy corner

The Munttoren stands on Muntplein, where the Amstel river and the Singel canal meet. It is a stocky brick tower with an eight-sided top half and a light, open spire. Next to it is a small gatehouse with a passage through the middle. Traffic swirls around the square, so stop for a minute and look up before you cross.

It is worth the walk because it shows you, in one glance, how the city has changed. This was once a gate in the medieval wall. Now it marks the spot where the Kalverstraat shopping street ends and the flower market begins. It costs nothing, it takes about ten minutes, and it sits on the way to almost everything else.

From city gate to mint

The tower began as part of the Regulierspoort, one of the main gates in Amsterdam's medieval wall. The gate was built in the 1480s, with two towers and a guard house. It was named after the Reguliers monastery that stood outside it.

In 1618 a fire destroyed most of the gate. Only the guard house and part of the western tower survived. The tower was rebuilt around 1620, and Hendrick de Keyser designed the new top and the open spire. He also gave it a clock with four faces.

The name comes from 1672, the Rampjaar, the year of disaster. England and France declared war on the Dutch Republic, and French troops occupied much of the country. Silver and gold could no longer be moved safely to Dordrecht and Enkhuizen, where coins were normally struck. So Amsterdam minted coins here for a while, in the guard house. It was a temporary job, but the name stuck.

The gatehouse you see today is not the old one. It replaced the medieval guard house between 1885 and 1887, in a Neo-Renaissance style, designed by Willem Springer. The passage through it dates from a renovation in 1938 and 1939.

What to look for

Stand across the square and look at the spire first. The open lantern at the top holds the bells. There are 38 of them. The brothers Hemony cast the first set in 1651 for the old stock exchange, and Pieter Hemony enlarged it when it moved here in 1668. Only 13 of the original Hemony bells are still in the tower. Traffic pollution damaged many of the small ones, and they were replaced. Some of the old ones are now kept in the Amsterdam Museum.

Then listen. A drum inside plays a short melody on the bells every quarter of an hour. Pieter Hemony made that drum in the 1660s, and it still works. Twice a year the city carillonist moves the pins on it to change the tunes. On Saturday afternoons, from about two o'clock, the carillonist plays the bells by hand. Hearing 17th-century bronze over the noise of the crossing is a good Amsterdam moment.

Last, look at the clock faces and the base of the tower. It was given extra foundations so that it would not sink when the Noord/Zuidlijn metro line was dug right beside it. Then walk through the little passage under the gatehouse, which leads towards Kalverstraat and Reguliersbreestraat.