The Provo movement
Gathered around it every Saturday in the mid-1960s to stage satirical happenings.
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A small bronze statue of a boy standing on Spui square, erected in 1960, its name meaning roughly the little darling. The statue in itself is modest: a thin boy with his hands on his hips, representing the children of Amsterdam. But what made it a landmark is what happened around it rather than what it depicts. The statue had been paid for by a cigarette company, a detail that did not go unnoticed. In the mid-1960s the Dutch protest movement Provo adopted it as the site of their weekly gatherings: they assembled around it on Saturday nights and staged a satirical happening, the police came and dispersed them, and the following week it repeated. The recurring confrontation turned the square into a theatre of conflict between 1960s youth and authority, and was among the sparks that opened Amsterdam to its reputation as a permissive city. The stop is a matter of minutes within a walk through the centre.
Gathered around it every Saturday in the mid-1960s to stage satirical happenings.
Police dispersed them, they returned the next week — and the square became a stage.
Among the beginnings of Amsterdam's image as a permissive city.
Spui square, central Amsterdam
A small Dutch movement active between 1965 and 1967 that mixed anarchism with organised pranks. It was known for its White Plans: free white bicycles for everyone in the city, white chickens instead of police, white housing against the housing shortage. Its methods were provocative without violence — relying on pushing authority into an overreaction in front of the cameras. It dissolved itself in 1967 after winning a council seat, but its ideas stayed in Dutch politics.
The square itself is among the quietest in the centre despite its central position. Around it are old bookshops and traditional brown cafés, the small Begijnhof gateway in its corner, and the shopping street Kalverstraat beginning from it. The Friday second-hand book market and the Sunday art market are worth timing your visit around.
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