Amsterdam, block by block

Amsterdam has been arguing with itself about how big it should be since the 17th century. The current municipal population is around 941,927, and the wider Metropoolregio sits at about 2.62 million. More than half of city residents have a non-Dutch background. Recent immigrants (anyone who arrived in the past ten years) make up around 19% of the city, and that number doubled between 2013 and 2023.

The friction shows in the numbers. The 2021 "Tourism in balance" bylaw set a cap of 20 million overnight stays a year. The city did 22.9 million in 2024, plus 26.7 million day trippers. Earlier this year the gemeente admitted the cap was never legally enforceable. Around 36-38% of trips inside the city are by bike. The 30 km/h citywide speed limit took effect on 8 December 2023 and motor-vehicle accidents fell 11% in the first year. The Wet Betaalbare Huur came in on 1 July 2024. What follows are four neighborhoods, ordered roughly by when they got "discovered."

De Jordaan

Photo: Andres Oropeza / Unsplash

The Jordaan is what Amsterdam looks like when it wins.

Construction started in 1612, on land west of the new Prinsengracht, as part of the city's third great expansion. It was supposed to be the working-class quarter, deliberately laid out on top of the existing medieval ditches and field paths, which is why its streets cut at an odd angle compared with the orderly canal ring next door. The name probably comes from the French jardin, brought by Huguenot refugees who arrived alongside Flemings and Sephardic Jews. Most streets are still named after trees and flowers. Around 1900 about 80,000 people lived here packed into tiny houses. Today it's closer to 20,000.

Two big working-class uprisings shaped the place. The Palingoproer of 25-26 July 1886 started when police cut down the rope used for the (already banned) eel-pulling game over the Lindengracht. The army got called in, fired live rounds, and 26 people died. The Jordaanoproer in July 1934 was a Depression-era protest against a cut to unemployment benefits: five killed, 56 seriously wounded by police count. In the 1970s the city wanted to demolish big parts of the neighborhood and put up modern blocks. The residents fought back and the streets stayed.

Het Parool was already calling out the change on 13 July 1979: "strangers think you can still find the Amsterdam working class in the Jordaan. They will be deceived. The neighbourhood is roaming with graduates, who experience the romanticism of a poorer past in prosperity. [...] Gentrification is what it is called in English." Apartments now go for around €9,000-€10,000 per square metre, roughly twice the price of a comparable flat in Noord or Zuidoost. About 65% of viewers at Amsterdam house showings are expats, and the Jordaan is one of their favourites.

The brown bars are the part that survived. Café Chris on Bloemstraat 42 has claimed since 1624 to be the oldest bar in the Jordaan; its lore says it was built as a lunch spot for the workers who were building the Westerkerk next door. The Westerkerk itself, designed by Hendrick de Keyser and inaugurated on 8 June 1631, is still the tallest church tower in central Amsterdam, with the Imperial Crown of Maximilian I on top. Rembrandt was buried there on 8 October 1669 in an unmarked pauper's grave. Café 't Papeneiland at Prinsengracht 2 is in a 1642 building and has a tunnel from the cellar that once led to a hidden Catholic church across the canal; Bill Clinton stopped by in late May 2011, ate a slice of apple pie, took a whole one with him, and sent a thank-you letter a month later. Café 't Smalle on Egelantiersgracht 12, in the old jenever distillery from around 1780, has a tiny terrace right on the gracht. De Twee Zwaantjes on Prinsengracht 114 is one of the last places in the city where the levenslied sing-along is a regular thing: accordion, smartlappen, locals belting out songs they all know. The neighbourhood anthem, "Aan de Amsterdamse grachten," was written in 1949 by Pieter Goemans on the bridge where Prinsengracht meets Leidsegracht.

The Anne Frank House at Prinsengracht 263-267 opened as a museum on 3 May 1960 and had 1,208,327 visitors in 2024, basically flat against 2023, still below the 2019 record of just over 1.3 million. The queue starts on the gracht around 9am.

De Pijp

Photo: Fons Heijnsbroek / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

De Pijp is what Amsterdam looks like when it's still arguing.

The neighborhood was built fast and cheap between roughly 1876 and 1900 under Plan Kalff, after the city scrapped Van Niftrik's earlier grand 1866 vision in favour of a tighter speculative grid. Narrow streets, closed blocks, no green space, fast private money. That layout is basically why De Pijp still feels the way it does: dense, intense, hard to drive through. Heineken brewed at Stadhouderskade 78 from 1867, in a brewery built that year by 22-year-old Gerard Adriaan Heineken after he bought the older De Hooiberg in 1864, until 1988, when production moved to Zoeterwoude. The old building reopened as a visitor centre in 1991 and got its current "Heineken Experience" branding in 2001.

The Albert Cuypmarkt anchors daily life. Established by municipal decree on 1 July 1905, initially Saturday evenings only, expanded to a six-day daytime market in 1912. About 260 stalls, Monday to Saturday, the largest outdoor market in the Netherlands. You can buy Vietnamese spring rolls next to a stroopwafel iron next to a guy selling socks. The post-1975 Surinamese arrival shows up around the corner: Warung Spang Makandra on Gerard Doustraat 39 has been doing Surinamese-Javanese food since 1978, the name meaning "together share" in Sranan. About half of Suriname's population took Dutch citizenship after independence on 25 November 1975, and many of them landed in De Pijp because rents were still low. CBS counts more than 250,000 Surinamese-origin residents in the Netherlands now.

Sarphatipark opened in 1885, named for Samuel Sarphati, the 19th-century Jewish doctor and city planner who built Amsterdam's first cheap-bread factory in 1855 (30% cheaper than other bakers). The park was renamed Bollandpark in 1942 by the Nazi-era municipal administration because Sarphati was Jewish; the original name came back in 1945. The newer wave is on the Ceintuurbaan: SLA opened its flagship salad bar at no. 149 in July 2013 and is now a chain across the country. Bakers and Roasters on Eerste Jacob van Campenstraat opened around 2012-2013 and runs the kind of brunch queue that tells you gentrification arrived. De Pijp now goes for €9,000-€12,500 per square metre. The neighborhood gets called Brooklyn-of-Amsterdam in tourist articles. Most people who actually live there hate that.

Noord

Photo: Steven Lek / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Noord is what Amsterdam looks like when the metro arrives.

Until 30 October 1968, when Queen Juliana opened the IJtunnel, you could only get there by boat. The Noord-Zuidlijn (metro line 52) opened to passengers on 22 July 2018 after about 25 years of planning, repeated delays, and a final cost of roughly €3.1 billion. Noord went from "the part of Amsterdam you don't go to" to a four-minute metro ride from De Pijp. The GVB ferries from behind Centraal Station are still free for pedestrians and cyclists, run every 5-10 minutes on the Buiksloterweg line, and operate around the clock. When the boat hits the north quay a wave of cyclists pours off and scatters in five directions at once.

The shipyard is the centre of the new Noord. The Nederlandsche Dok en Scheepsbouw Maatschappij was created on 27 February 1946 from the merger of the older Nederlandsche Dok Maatschappij (1920) and the Nederlandsche Scheepsbouw Maatschappij (1894). Once the largest shipyard in the country. Bankruptcy filed in 1985. The 90-hectare site sat empty, got squatted in the 1990s, and the borough started redevelopment around 1999. The IJ-Hallen flea market has run inside the old shipbuilding halls since 1994: about 750 outdoor stalls in summer, 500 indoor in winter, usually called the biggest flea market in Europe.

Eye Filmmuseum on IJpromenade 1 opened on 4 April 2012, designed by the Vienna firm Delugan Meissl Associated Architects. The white origami shape on the waterfront is the first thing you see from the ferry. The A'DAM Toren on Overhoeksplein 1 was originally Toren Overhoeks, designed by Arthur Staal and completed in 1971 as Royal Dutch Shell's research HQ; it reopened in 2016 as a mixed-use tower with a hotel, club, and the "Over the Edge" swing on the roof at about 100 metres up. Pllek opened on Tt. Neveritaweg 59 in 2012, built almost entirely from old shipping containers with a small artificial beach on the IJ. De Ceuvel on Korte Papaverweg 4 opened in June 2014: old houseboats hauled onto land, surrounded by phytoremediation plants slowly cleaning the polluted soil, off-grid where possible, vegan café. Faralda Crane Hotel launched on 4 April 2014 in a 1950s shipyard crane saved from demolition, three suites stacked at 35, 40 and 45 metres.

The numbers. Square-metre prices in Noord run roughly €6,000-€8,000 versus €10,000-€12,000 in Centrum and Zuid, still the cheapest of the central boroughs but the gap is closing. Around NDSM, prices reportedly jumped 20-25% in two to three years. The Buiksloterham development, on a 250-acre former heavy-industry zone with soil polluted by zinc, nickel and copper, plans more than 8,000 new homes and 30% social housing. UvA researchers in 2025 found long-term residents mostly happy with the upgrades but worried their kids won't be able to stay. One resident: "If you don't see that Noord has been gentrified, then you must be blind."

Oost

Photo: Erik Joling / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5)

Oost is the east where the city keeps remembering things.

Walk east from Centraal Station for twenty minutes, cross the Singelgracht, and Amsterdam stops looking like the postcards. The houses get lower, the canals get straighter, the languages get louder. The Indische Buurt and the Dapperbuurt are two adjacent worker districts built between the 1880s and 1910s, on top of city planner Jan Kalff's 1877 expansion plan. The Indische Buurt streets were named after Dutch East Indies islands starting in 1902: Javastraat, Sumatrastraat, Borneostraat, Balistraat, Molukkenstraat. The Tropenmuseum at Linnaeusstraat 2 is in a neo-renaissance building whose construction started in January 1916; Queen Wilhelmina opened it on 9 October 1926. The collection started in Haarlem in 1864 as the Koloniaal Museum and is still wrestling with how to show a few centuries of colonial loot.

The Dappermarkt has been on Dapperstraat since 1910. About 250 stalls, Monday to Saturday. It's the second-largest market in the city after Albert Cuyp and the most diverse: Surinamese roti, Turkish bread, Moroccan olives, Dutch raw herring, all in 600 metres. Oosterpark opened in 1891, designed by Leonard Springer in English landscape style. It holds the Slavernijmonument, unveiled in 2002, marking the abolition of slavery in the Dutch colonies in 1863. Café De Ysbreeker at Weesperzijde 23 has been there since 1702, named after the icebreaker boat that sat in front of it cracking the ice on the Amstel. Roopram Roti opened the Dapperbuurt branch on Eerste van Swindenstraat 4 in May 2004; the family roti business goes back to 1967. Wilde Zwijnen on Javaplein 23 opened in April 2010 and was the first upmarket restaurant in Oost: that's the marker most locals point to as the moment the gentrification was real. Volkshotel on Wibautstraat 150, in the old Volkskrant headquarters from 1965, opened in June 2014.

On 2 November 2004, Theo van Gogh was murdered on Linnaeusstraat, on the corner of Tweede Oosterparkstraat, in front of the Amsterdam-Oost borough office. He was cycling to work. Mohammed Bouyeri, a 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan, shot him eight times, then cut his throat and pinned a five-page note to his chest with a knife. Bouyeri was arrested after a shootout with police nearby and convicted on 26 July 2005 to life imprisonment without parole. At the 2024 commemoration, his sister Jantine van Gogh said simply: "We missen Theo enorm, ook in publiek debat." Twenty-two years on, the corner has a small bronze plaque in the pavement. Most people walk past without seeing it.

The Indische Buurt has gained an estimated 15-20% in property value in the last two to three years. Two waves of state-led regeneration in 2009 and 2016 pushed out small Turkish and Moroccan shops along Javastraat and brought in espresso bars and concept stores. The Maghreb butcher next to the third-wave bakery: it actually exists like that for now.

Photo: Lisha Riabinina / Unsplash

The pattern. Jordaan got rich first. De Pijp followed. Noord caught up after the metro arrived in 2018. Oost is mid-fight. The cap on tourist stays is 20 million and the city did 22.9 million in 2024. The cap was never legally enforceable. A residents' campaign group is suing.

See the full Amsterdam neighborhood scores or explore the map. Data from OpenStreetMap.