The Amsterdam Dungeon

A walk through the city's dark past

The Amsterdam Dungeon is an indoor show on the Rokin, 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. The Amsterdam one opened in September 2005. Each Dungeon tells the history of its own city, and this one sticks to Amsterdam stories: executions, the Eighty Years' War, plague-era fears and a few legends. The tone is theatrical and often funny rather than truly frightening. The shows are even rated on a Scare-o-Meter from 1 to 5.

A chapel underneath it all

The building is the best part of the story. For centuries a chapel called the Kapel ter Heilige Stede stood on this spot. It was built in honour of the Miracle of Amsterdam. That chapel was gone by 1908. The present building on Rokin 78 to 80 went up between 1908 and 1912, with an art dealer's exhibition rooms on the street side and a chapel entrance in the middle. That chapel is the Nieuwezijds Kapel.

The Nieuwezijds Kapel later closed as a church. When the Dungeon moved in, nothing of the church was demolished. The sets, backstage areas and offices are built into it, and could be taken out again so the church could be used once more. The chapel also sits on top of real graves. None of them are visible to visitors.

What to look for

From the pavement, look up at the tiled panels on the facade. They still name the art dealers who once showed paintings here. It is an odd front for a house of horrors.

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 themselves play with local history. In the Flying Dutchman scene you are in a bar called 't Aepjen, a name you can also find on a real wooden house in the old port quarter. In the Black John scene, an anatomy theatre, the corpse is a murderer who is due to be painted by Rembrandt the next day. Another scene tells the story of Elsje Christiaens, and the final stretch is a mirror maze meant to feel like the city's twisting streets.

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.

What to combine it with

The Mirakelkolom stands on the pavement next door. It is a remnant of the old chapel and a small column that tells you what was here before. Read it before or after your visit and the whole site makes more sense.

A two-minute walk away, the display cases in Rokin metro station show what archaeologists dug up while building the line: ordinary things from daily life between 1300 and 1900. It is a good, quiet counterweight to the theatre. The Begijnhof is also close, a walled courtyard where the street noise fades.

If the show made you curious about the real places, walk to the wooden house at Zeedijk 1, about ten minutes on foot. Or head to the Westerkerk to stand near Rembrandt's real, unmarked resting place. For more of the same mood, the free walking tour Dark Amsterdam starts nearby and covers ghosts, gallows and canal monsters.