Netherlands · Old Town
Amsterdam
A self-guided walking tour of the Amsterdam Old Town, every street in two days.
Every street on the menu.
Every street in the Old Town of Amsterdam is a line of dots you collect by walking it. I have been lying in one of them for six hundred years and I am still not finished.
At a glance
Plan your walk.
- Distance
- 31.9 km
- Time
- about 9 hours
- Streets
- 156
- Steps
- 5 streets with steps
- Start point
- Koninklijk Paleis
- Phone needed while walking
- no
- Works offline
- yes
- Expires
- never
The Old Town
Every street, drawn.
Every lane inside that line is a course. The circles are fruit.
Landmarks
What I would eat first.
Landmarks are fruit. The bigger the sight, the bigger the bonus.
Koninklijk Paleis 1,500 points
Go in and look down. The world is laid into the floor of the main hall in marble, both halves of it, and nobody stops you walking across the lot. Best surface in this level, and I do not say that lightly.
Amsterdam Museum 500 points
One outer wall is set with row upon row of carved house stones, taken off buildings that no longer exist. Each was an address back when addresses had no numbers. Rescued stone. I am always in favour.
Nieuwe Kerk 500 points
Kings are sworn in here. That happens perhaps twice in a lifetime, so most of the year the doors are open for something else entirely. Come at it from a side lane. The face it turns to the big open space is not its front.
Oude Kerk 500 points
Two lanes lead in to it, one named narrow and one named wide, and both names are accurate. Little houses are built hard against the outside, leaning on it the way something grows on a stone. Go all the way around it before you go in.
Begijnhofkapel 250 points
The way in is one low door off the lane, and it is easy to walk straight past it. Behind the door the noise stops dead. A quiet lawn, buildings facing inward all the way round it, in the middle of the busiest part of town. Push.
Munttoren 250 points
The south corner, where the ring of water closes on itself. It is on a traffic island now, so you go round it rather than past it. On the hour the bells up there play, and it is more than one note. Stop for it.
Nieuwmarkt 250 points
The eastern corner of this level, and the point where the old moat turns. Something out in the open draws every eye. Turn your back on it and look at the edges. Streets come in from all sides, and one of them is a sea dike that has not seen the sea in a very long time.
Ons' Lieve Heer op Solder 250 points
You get in from the water side now, through a plain door across the lane, and then you walk under the street. The city once had dozens of places like this, kept out of sight because the rules of the day wanted them out of sight. This is the one still standing.
Eating
Actual food.
Almost nothing on this list was invented here. The herring comes closest, and even that trick was learned at sea. Everything else arrived with people. The rice table came back from the colony after 1945, with the people repatriated from it. The roti came later. It arrived with families whose great grandparents had been taken from British India to Suriname to work. A port eats its own history, and this one keeps a long guest list.
Meat and fish
Haring (Hollandse Nieuwe)
Young herring, caught before any roe has formed. It is cleaned so that the pancreas stays in, and that one organ makes the enzyme that ripens the fish. The herring finishes itself. Caught from the first of May, and it may be called Hollandse Nieuwe until the end of September.
Rijsttafel
Rice with a long row of side dishes, and all of them land on the table at the same time. The name is colonial. It appears in the Dutch East Indies in the early nineteenth century, at a meal a Regent laid on for the Governor General. The tradition reached the Netherlands with the people repatriated from 1945. Order it for more than two.
Roti
A flatbread, not a pancake. Say pancake in Suriname and you will get laughed at. In the Netherlands it turns up with curry chicken, curry potato and long beans beside it. It came here with Hindustani Surinamese families, whose ancestors were brought from British India to Suriname as contract workers between 1873 and 1916.
Sources: Nederland Voedselland, Parbode, Red Pers, Nationaal Archief
Vegetarian
Oude Noord-Hollandse Gouda
The name comes from a market monopoly. In 1395 the town of Gouda won the sole right to sell cheese in the county of Holland. The town ended up owning the word. This one has to be made from milk out of the province Amsterdam stands in, which is what the protected name protects. Ask for it aged. Past a year it turns firm and deep gold.
Ask at the counter about the rennet. It is not always the plant kind.
Sources: European Commission
Appeltaart
The oldest printed Dutch recipe is from 1514, in the first cookbook written in Dutch. It already tells you to keep the pips out, because they ruin the whole tart. The spices in it, cinnamon and ginger and cloves, were once a way of showing what you could afford. It comes warm under a heap of whipped cream, and the slices are not modest.
Sources: Muiderslot (Rijksmuseum Muiderslot), IsGeschiedenis, I amsterdam (Amsterdam and Partners)
Poffertjes
Small thick pancakes off a copper plate full of dimples, turned once. Then icing sugar, and a curl of butter on top. At the Amsterdam fair of 1875 one stall sold sixteen thousand eight hundred of them a day. Back then the stalls were the smart option and everyone else queued at the plain one.
Sources: Nederlands Bakkerijmuseum, Nederlands Openluchtmuseum, Kenniscentrum Immaterieel Erfgoed Nederland
Vegan
Two, and that is deliberate. This band lists dishes with documented history behind them. In Amsterdam the plant based ones came in on ships, not out of a Dutch farmhouse. The city is full of newer kitchens cooking without animals. They are simply younger than everything else on this card.
Tahoe ketjap
Bean curd in soy sauce, and the name is already the whole recipe. Tahoe is the Dutch word for tofu, ketjap is the sauce. The national inventory of intangible heritage names it among the dishes of the Indies kitchen, in the same list as the meat ones. Plant food that was never the afterthought here.
Sambal goreng boontjes
Green beans cooked down in a spiced sambal. The national inventory lists it by name, as one of the vegetable dishes of this kitchen. That is why it is here and not filed under garnish. Take it inside a rice table or on its own with rice.
Ask whether there is shrimp paste in the sambal. Often there is.
Late breakfast
Eetsalon Van Dobben the old one
Korte Reguliersdwarsstraat 5-7-9
A white tiled sandwich counter that opened in 1945 and has flatly refused to move with the times. The croquette arrives cut lengthwise on a buttered white roll. The staff still wear long white coats. What you drink with it is a glass of milk. Broodjes cost a few euros and the people who live here queue for them. Eighty years of doing one thing is my kind of patience.
- Mon10:00–21:00
- Tue10:00–21:00
- Wed10:00–21:00
- Thu10:00–21:00
- Fri10:00–21:00
- Sat10:00–21:00
- Sun10:30–20:00
Sources: Time Out Amsterdam, I amsterdam (Amsterdam and Partners), AT5 (NH Media)
Afternoon coffee
Café 't Papeneiland the old one
Prinsengracht 2-H
A corner house from 1642 with the year cut into a stone in the wall. There has been a cafe on the ground floor since 1896. The same family has run it since 1966. The man in charge bakes the apple pie himself. No music, clean tables, an old stove. The tunnel to the hidden church across the water still starts in the cellar. That is a lot of history for one slice of pie.
- Mon10:00–01:00
- Tue10:00–01:00
- Wed10:00–01:00
- Thu10:00–01:00
- Fri10:00–03:00
- Sat10:00–01:00
- Sun12:00–01:00
Sources: Oneindig Noord-Holland (ONH), I amsterdam (Amsterdam and Partners), Time Out Amsterdam
Back to Black Weteringstraat where locals go
Weteringstraat 48
Two women opened this in 2014 and had a roaster in the cellar by November. It sits back off the busy street on a quiet canal corner, in a part of town otherwise handed over to visitors. Long shared tables, mismatched chairs, and the counter is at the back so the front room is for sitting. Cake, obviously.
- Mon08:00–18:00
- Tue08:00–18:00
- Wed08:00–18:00
- Thu08:00–18:00
- Fri08:00–18:00
- Sat09:00–18:00
- Sun09:00–18:00
Sources: The Coffeevine, Sprudge, Time Out Amsterdam, I amsterdam (Amsterdam and Partners)
Dinner
Hoi Tin the old one
Zeedijk 122
Cantonese, right next to the temple, and the same family has been cooking here for half a century, three generations of them. The name means between heaven and sea, after the Chinese community that worked Amsterdam's shipping trade. Its own bakery supplies other Chinese kitchens in the city. Order dim sum until you can no longer point.
- Mon12:00–22:00
- Tue12:00–22:00
- Wed12:00–22:00
- Thu12:00–22:00
- Fri12:00–22:00
- Sat12:00–22:00
- Sun12:00–22:00
Sources: Time Out Amsterdam, I amsterdam (Amsterdam and Partners), NH Nieuws (NH Media)
Warung Spang Makandra (Gerard Doustraat) where locals go
Gerard Doustraat 33-H
Javanese Surinamese, out in De Pijp. A local starred chef starts here when he walks visiting cooks through the Surinamese food of this city. Begin where he begins, with baka bana: fried plantain under peanut sauce. The rames plates are big and the bill is not. You can walk in without booking.
- Mon11:00–22:00
- Tue11:00–22:00
- Wed11:00–22:00
- Thu11:00–22:00
- Fri11:00–22:00
- Sat11:00–22:00
- Sun13:00–22:00
Sources: MICHELIN Guide, Time Out Amsterdam, I amsterdam (Amsterdam and Partners)
Checked 5 September 2026.
Name origin
Why it is called Amsterdam.
The name is a piece of engineering with a river bolted onto the front of it. The river is the Amstel, the engineering is a dam, and the oldest spelling of the place is Amestelledamme, written down for the first time in 1275. Amstel itself reads as two old words, one for water and one for firm dry ground. Around here the dry ground is the news.
Sources: www.etymologiebank.nl; maps.amsterdam.nl p. 7
Why here
Somebody stood here and decided.
A low, wet, unpromising spot where the Amstel runs out into the IJ. Before 1270 a connected line of dikes was standing, and a dam lay across the river exactly where the Dam is now. A dam means every cargo has to come out of one boat and into another. A place where everything is put down and picked up again turns into a market on its own. I have a lot of time for a town founded on making people stop.
Sources: maps.amsterdam.nl p. 7
Why then
When the first stone went down.
The first people arrived on the banks shortly after 1200, craftsmen and traders. In 1275 the count of Holland let them off his tolls, which is the moment the name gets onto paper. Town rights followed around 1300, when the place ran to some 250 houses and about 1,175 people. That is not a city. That is a snack.
Sources: maps.amsterdam.nl p. 7; openresearch.amsterdam
Who ruled
Everyone who thought they owned this.
I outlasted all of them. It is the one thing I am good at.
- 1275–1578
Whoever held the county of Holland held this place. On 27 October 1275 Count Floris V let the people at the dam off the toll on his rivers, and that is the first time the name turns up in writing at all. Town rights came around 1300. A century and a half later the man in charge was a duke of Burgundy, handing out tax relief. The title kept changing. The address never did: somewhere else.
Sources: openresearch.amsterdam; maps.amsterdam.nl p. 7; openresearch.amsterdam p. 3
- 1578–1795
Then the city's own council. In 1578, at the change of government called the Alteratie, it went over from Catholic to Protestant, and the town started growing again. What got built next says what that council cared about: an exchange in 1585, a bank in 1609, a corn exchange in 1617. Four street names on this level still carry the first of them. All three houses existed to make goods move faster. My whole project is the opposite of that.
Sources: maps.amsterdam.nl p. 8
- 1795–
Then a country decided. After 1795 the decisions moved to a national government and stayed there. The French years were lean: the Continental System took the trade away, and between 1795 and 1815 the city shrank to about 180,000 people. What Amsterdam kept was the title. The constitution still calls it the capital, and the government sits in a different town altogether. A capital nobody governs from is a quiet capital. Suits me.
Sources: maps.amsterdam.nl p. 13; wetten.overheid.nl
The emblem
What the shield means.
Three marks on a black band, silver on red, stacked one above the other. That is the blazon, and a decree of 1947 confirmed it as the city's shield. What the three marks mean, nobody knows. On the older seal they were not even saltires; those came into fashion about two centuries later. A city has been signing itself for centuries with a symbol it cannot explain. That is my kind of answer.
Sources: nl.wikipedia.org; www.amsterdamsebinnenstad.nl
Emblem: Original artwork for Cobble Gobble — no third-party source
Three facts
Three things I know about this place.
The ground under you did not grow here, it was carried here. People raised their own house plots, one at a time, along both banks of the Amstel, until the separate heaps ran together into two long ribbons. The two river dikes along those same banks are Warmoesstraat and Nieuwendijk now, and that is where the merchants and the skippers sat. Somebody moved all of that by the basket. I take it as a compliment.
Sources: maps.amsterdam.nl p. 7
In 1452 about three quarters of the town burned down. The ruler let the citizens off their taxes, but only if they rebuilt with brick side walls and hard roofing instead of reed, and a by-law of 31 May 1452 banned timber side walls outright. They went on building in wood anyway. Brick only really spread from 1521, seventy years later. That is how fast a city takes a hint.
Sources: openresearch.amsterdam p. 1; openresearch.amsterdam p. 3
This level has a hard edge, and the edge is from 1425. In that year the city dug three new defensive moats as part of an extension: the Singel to the west, and the Kloveniersburgwal and the Geldersekade to the east. In 1481 a brick wall five to six metres high went up along them and closed the lot in. The wall is gone, the water is not. So the shape you walk today was drawn by people worrying about who might show up.
Sources: openresearch.amsterdam
Street words
What the names on the signs mean.
- steeg
- An alley, and by far the commonest word on this level. Zoutsteeg, Pijlsteeg, Taksteeg, Gapersteeg, Stoofsteeg, Molensteeg. Walk everything ending in -steeg and you have walked most of this.
- burgwal
- The rampart along a town moat, and now the street beside it. Oudezijds Voorburgwal, Oudezijds Achterburgwal, Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, Kloveniersburgwal, Grimburgwal. Voor is the front one, Achter the back one, and under some of them the water has been filled in.
- -zijds
- The side. Oudezijds is the old side of the Amstel, Nieuwezijds the new one. It says nothing about which half is older, whatever the words suggest. They are named after two parish churches, and that is as much as I am saying.
- dijk
- A dike with a street on top of it. Zeedijk, Nieuwendijk, and the same idea at the waterside as -kade: Geldersekade. These names are not poetry, they are a set of building instructions.
- dwarsstraat
- The cross street to another one. Bethaniëndwarsstraat, Reguliersdwarsstraat, Sint Annendwarsstraat, Sint Jacobsdwarsstraat, Pieter Jacobszdwarsstraat. A name that openly admits it depends on somebody else's name.
- enge / wijde
- Narrow and wide. Enge Kerksteeg and Wijde Kerksteeg, Enge Kapelsteeg and Wijde Kapelsteeg, Enge Lombardsteeg and Wijde Lombardsteeg. The same lane twice, in two widths. The tight one is better every time.
- -ers-
- The people who worked there. Mandenmakerssteeg for the basket makers, Olieslagerssteeg for the oil pressers, Haringpakkerssteeg for the herring packers, Kuiperssteeg for the barrel makers. Four alleys, four trades, and most of that list is about moving food around.
The size of it
Walk it in a day: Amsterdam in numbers.
Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.
- 156streets
- 1,561dots
- 25.5km of street
- 31.9km on foot
- 9hours at a stroll
Nearby
Old Towns close to this one.
The game
Your first city is free.
Cobble Gobble is a walking game for iPhone. Claim any city as your free one. Every other city is a one-time purchase you keep for good, Family Sharing included, and a city you own plays fully offline.