The Amsterdam Dungeon

A walk through the city's dark past

The Amsterdam Dungeon is an indoor show in the middle of the old centre. Actors in costume lead you through a series of rooms, each set in a different year between 1542 and 1753. You meet a torturer, a judge, a witch hunter and a ghost sailor. You are not just watching. The cast pick people out of the group, and you may be asked to play a part.

It is run by Merlin Entertainments, the British company behind the London Dungeon and its sister sites in York, Berlin and Hamburg. Each one tells the history of its own city. The Amsterdam one opened in September 2005 and sticks to local stories: executions, the Eighty Years' War, ghost tales and a few legends. The tone is theatrical and often funny rather than truly frightening. The shows even carry a Scare-o-Meter rating from 1 to 5.

A church under the show

The building is the best part of the story. The Dungeon is built into a church called the Nieuwezijdse Kapel, which closed in 1970. Nothing of the church was demolished. The sets, backstage areas and offices can all be taken out again, so the building could one day be a church once more.

The chapel also stands on top of several real graves. None of them are visible to visitors.

What to look for

Inside, you will not see the church at all. The one clue is on the Gallows' Field, where an actor's voice echoes down from the very dome. Listen for it.

The rooms play with local history. In the Flying Dutchman scene you are in a louche bar called 't Aepjen. The same name belongs to a real wooden house on the Zeedijk, the wooden house at Zeedijk 1, about ten minutes on foot. In the Black John scene you stand in an anatomy theatre, where the corpse is a murderer due to be painted by Rembrandt the next day. On the Gallows' Field the Nightwatch shows you the body of Elsje Christiaens. Another room is a Council of Blood court from 1571, where a judge picks out sinners in the name of Philip II of Spain. A mirror maze, meant to feel like the city's twisting streets, is also part of the route.

One prop is worth a smile. You will see a grave said to be Rembrandt's. It is a stage grave. The painter is actually buried in the Westerkerk, a short walk away across the centre.

The show has changed over the years. Rides and rooms have come and gone, and the Flying Dutchman and the Gallows' Field are fairly recent additions. So the details you read in older write-ups may not match what you see.