Founding
capital and most populous city of the Netherlands
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Amsterdam (Dutch: [ˌɑmstərˈdɑm] ⓘ; lit. 'Dam in the Amstel') is the capital and largest city of the Netherlands. As of 1 January 2026, it had a population of 941,873 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the urban area and 2,480,394 in the metropolitan area. Located in the Dutch province of North Holland, Amsterdam is colloquially referred to as the "Venice of the North", for its large number of canals, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Amsterdam was founded at the mouth of the Amstel river, which was dammed to control flooding. Originally a small fishing village in the 12th century, Amsterdam became a major world port during the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, when the Netherlands was an economic powerhouse. Amsterdam was the leading centre for finance and trade, as well as a hub of secular art production. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the city expanded and new neighborhoods and suburbs were built. The city has a long tradition of openness, liberalism, and tolerance. Cycling is key to the city's modern character, and there are numerous biking paths and lanes spread throughout.
Amsterdam's main attractions include its historic canals; the Rijksmuseum, the state museum with Dutch Golden Age art; the Van Gogh Museum; the Dam Square, where the Royal Palace of Amsterdam and former city hall are located; the Amsterdam Museum; Stedelijk Museum, with modern art; the Concertgebouw concert hall; the Anne Frank House; the Scheepvaartmuseum, the Natura Artis Magistra; Hortus Botanicus, NEMO, the red-light district and cannabis coffee shops. The city is known for its nightlife and festival activity, with several nightclubs among the world's most famous. Its artistic heritage, canals, and narrow canal houses with gabled façades, well-preserved legacies of the city's 17th-century Golden Age, have attracted millions of visitors annually.
The Amsterdam Stock Exchange, founded in 1602, is considered the oldest "modern" securities market stock exchange in the world. As the commercial capital of the Netherlands and one of the top financial centres in Europe, Amsterdam is considered an alpha-world city. The city is the cultural capital of the Netherlands. Many large Dutch institutions have their headquarters in the city. Many of the world's largest companies are based in Amsterdam or have established their European headquarters there, such as technology companies Uber, Netflix, and Tesla. Although Amsterdam is the official capital of the Netherlands, it is not the seat of government. The main governmental institutions, and foreign embassies, are located in The Hague.
In 2022, Amsterdam was ranked the ninth-best city to live in by the Economist Intelligence Unit and 12th on quality of living for environment and infrastructure by Mercer. The city was ranked 4th place globally as a top tech hub in 2019. The Port of Amsterdam is the fourth-largest in Europe. The KLM hub and Amsterdam's main airport, Schiphol, is the busiest airport in the Netherlands, and third in Europe. The Dutch capital is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, with about 180 nationalities represented. Immigration and ethnic segregation in Amsterdam is a current issue.
Amsterdam's notable residents throughout its history include painters Rembrandt and Vincent van Gogh, 17th-century philosophers Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, René Descartes, and John Amos Comenius, and Holocaust victim and diarist Anne Frank.
Due to its geographical location in what used to be wet peatland, the founding of Amsterdam is later than other urban centres in the Low Countries. However, around the area of what later became Amsterdam, farmers settled as early as three millennia ago. They lived along the prehistoric IJ river and upstream of its tributary the Amstel. The prehistoric IJ was a shallow and quiet stream in peatland behind beach ridges. This secluded area was able to grow into an important local settlement centre, especially in the late Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the Roman Age. Neolithic and Roman artefacts have also been found in the prehistoric Amstel bedding under Amsterdam's Damrak and Rokin, such as shards of Bell Beaker culture pottery (2200–2000 BC) and a granite grinding stone (2700–2750 BC), but the location of these artefacts around the river banks of the Amstel probably points to the presence of a modest semi-permanent or seasonal settlement. Until water issues were controlled, a permanent settlement would not have been possible, for during this period the river mouth and the banks of the Amstel were too wet for permanent habitation.
The origins of Amsterdam are linked to the development of a dam on the Amstel River called Amestelle, meaning 'watery area', from Aa(m) 'river' + stelle 'site at a shoreline', 'river bank'. In this area, land reclamation started as early as the late 10th century. Amestelle was located along a side arm of the IJ. This sidearm took its name from the eponymous land: Amstel. Amestelle was inhabited by farmers, who lived more inland and more upstream, where the land was not as wet as at the banks of the downstream river mouth. These farmers were starting the reclamation around upstream Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, and later at the other side of the river at Amstelveen. The Van Amstel family, known in documents by this name since 1019, held the stewardship in this northwestern nook of the ecclesiastical district of the bishop of Utrecht. The family later served also under the count of Holland.
A major turning point in the development of the Amstel River mouth was the All Saint's Flood of 1170. In an extremely short time, the shallow river IJ turned into a wide estuary, which from then on offered the Amstel an open connection to the Zuiderzee, IJssel, and waterways further afield. This made the water flow of the Amstel more active, so excess water could be drained better. With drier banks, the downstream Amstel mouth became attractive for permanent habitation. Moreover, the river had grown from an insignificant peat stream into a junction of international waterways. A settlement was built here immediately after the landscape change of 1170. Right from the start of its foundation it focused on traffic, production, and trade; not on farming, as opposed to how communities had lived further upstream for the past 200 years and northward for thousands of years. The construction of a dam at the mouth of the Amstel, eponymously named Dam, is historically estimated to have occurred between 1264 and 1275. The settlement first appeared in a document from 1275, concerning a road toll granted by the count of Holland Floris V to the residents apud Amestelledamme 'at the dam in the Amstel' or 'at the dam of Amstelland'. This allowed the inhabitants of the village to travel freely through the County of Holland, paying no tolls at bridges, locks and dams. This was a move in a years-long struggle for power in the area between the count of Holland and the Amstel family who governed the area on behalf of the bishop of Utrecht. By 1327, the name had developed into Aemsterdam.
The bishop of Utrecht granted Amsterdam zone rights in either 1300 or 1306. The Mirakel van Amsterdam in 1345 rendered the city an important place of pilgrimage. During the heyday of the Stille Omgang, which became the expression of the pilgrimage after the Protestant Reformation, up to 90,000 pilgrims came to Amsterdam.
From the 14th century on, Amsterdam flourished, largely from trade with the Hanseatic League. From the 15th century on the city established an independent trade route with the Baltic Sea in grain and timber, cutting out the Hanseatic League as middlemen. The city became the staple market of Europe for bulk cargo. This was made possible due to innovations in the herring fishery, from which Amsterdam reaped great wealth. Herring had demand in markets all around Europe. Inventions of on-board gibbing and the haringbuis in 1415, made longer voyages feasible and hence enabled Dutch fishermen to follow the herring shoals far from the coasts, giving them a monopoly in the industry.
The herring industry relied on international trade cooperation and large initial investments in ships. This required many highly skilled and unskilled workers to cooperate, as well as the import of the necessary raw materials to turn an unfinished product into a marketable one. This required merchants to then sell it throughout the continent and bookkeepers and accountants to divide the profit. In short, the herring industry was setting up the foundations for what would later become the transcontinental trade system and the Dutch Golden Age, with Amsterdam at its centre, hence the saying "Amsterdam is built on Herringbones".
The Low Countries were part of the Habsburg inheritance and came under the Spanish Empire in the early sixteenth century. The Dutch rebelled against Philip II of Spain, who led a defense of Catholicism during the Protestant Reformation. The main reasons for the uprising were the imposition of new taxes, the tenth penny, and the religious persecution of Protestants by the newly introduced Inquisition. The revolt escalated into the Eighty Years' War, which ultimately led to Dutch independence. Strongly pushed by Dutch Revolt leader William the Silent, the Dutch Republic became known for its relative religious tolerance. Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, Protestant Huguenots from France, prosperous merchants, and printers from Flanders, and economic and religious refugees from the Spanish-controlled parts of the Low Countries found safety in Amsterdam. The influx of Flemish printers and the city's intellectual tolerance made Amsterdam a centre for the European free press.
During the 17th century, Amsterdam experienced what is considered its Golden Age, during which it became the wealthiest city in the Western world. Ships sailed from Amsterdam to the Baltic Sea, the Caribbean, North America, and Africa, as well as present-day Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and Brazil, forming the basis of a worldwide trading network. Amsterdam's merchants had the largest share in both the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch West India Company. These companies acquired overseas possessions that later became Dutch colonies.
Amsterdam was Europe's most important hub for the shipment of goods and was the leading financial centre of the Western world. In 1602, the Amsterdam office of the Dutch East India Company became the world's first stock exchange by trading in its own shares. The Bank of Amsterdam started operations in 1609, acting as a full-service bank for Dutch merchant bankers and as a reserve bank.
From the 17th century onwards, Amsterdam also became involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The city was a major destination port for Dutch slave ships participating in the triangular trade, which lasted until the United Netherlands abolished the Netherlands' involvement in the trade in 1814 at the request of the British government.
Amsterdam's prosperity declined during the 18th and early 19th centuries. The wars of the Dutch Republic with England (latterly, Great Britain) and France took their toll on the city. During the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, Amsterdam's significance reached its lowest point, with Holland being absorbed into the French Empire. However, the later establishment of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815 marked a turning point.
The end of the 19th century is sometimes called Amsterdam's second Golden Age. New museums, a railway station, and the Concertgebouw were built; At the same time, the Industrial Revolution reached the city. The Amsterdam–Rhine Canal was dug to give Amsterdam a direct connection to the Rhine, and the North Sea Canal was dug to give the port a shorter connection to the North Sea. Both projects dramatically improved commerce with the rest of Europe and the world. In 1906, Joseph Conrad gave a brief description of Amsterdam as seen from the seaside, in The Mirror of the Sea.
Shortly before the First World War, the city started to expand again, and new suburbs were built. Even though the Netherlands remained neutral in this war, Amsterdam suffered a food shortage, and heating fuel became scarce. The shortages sparked riots in which several people were killed. These riots are known as the Aardappeloproer (Potato Rebellion). People started looting stores and warehouses to get supplies, mainly food.
On 1 January 1921, after a flood in 1916, the depleted municipalities of Durgerdam, Holysloot, Zunderdorp and Schellingwoude (all lying north of Amsterdam) were, at their own request, annexed to the city. Between the wars, the city continued to expand, most notably to the west of the Jordaan district in the Frederik Hendrikbuurt and surrounding neighbourhoods.
Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940 and took control of the country. Some Amsterdam citizens sheltered Jews, thereby exposing themselves and their families to a high risk of being imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. More than 100,000 Dutch Jews were deported and murdered in Nazi concentration camps, including 56,521 victims in Auschwitz and a further number of 34,082 accounted for in Sobibor. Around 60,000 Jewish inhabitants, including Jewish prewar refugees from Austria and Germany, were living in Amsterdam at the time of the Nazi occupation. Only those provided with a safe haven, avoiding deportation and denunciation, or the very few who returned from the camps at the end of the war, managed to survive.
At first the German occupation authorities were very cautious, wanting to convince the city inhabitants of their sincerity. However, their outlook soon turned to cynicism and brutality. A cause in the change of their behaviour was an attack by a Dutch resistance fighter against a collaborator belonging to the paramilitary Dutch fascist organisation, the NSB. The injured man died and in response Heinrich Himmler ordered reprisals. 427 Amsterdam Jews were arrested on 22 February 1941 and sent to Mauthausen concentration camp. Only two people survived.
Incensed, a broad spectrum of passive resistance was organized by the Dutch Underground. Trade unions, among them socialist and Communist Party activists, led the protest. Their outcry received support from white collar employees in the civil service and support from the local diocese of the Church. Approval was also given and encouraged by the Dutch government-in-exile under Queen Wilhelmina in London.
The German authorities were taken completely by surprise by the level of resistance known as the February strike. 300,000 people participated in the protest against the arrests of Jews. However, the occupier soon responded crudely and brutally, smashing union and illegal party activity. With the edifice of resistance removed the SS and German police apparatus, supported by collaborators in the Dutch auxiliary police, arrested thousands of defenceless Jews in Amsterdam's Jewish Quarter. The two main waves of arrest, culminating in deportation, occurred on 26 May 1943 and on 20 June 1943.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Amsterdam”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.