The carillon
Played by hand from a room inside the tower itself.
Jisis — CC BY-SA 3.0 · John Lord — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Vincent van Gogh — Public domain
The tower of Amsterdam's Old Church, the oldest standing building in the city, the body of the church dating to the early fourteenth century. The tower is climbed on a guided tour only and cannot be entered alone. The reason is practical: the stairs are narrow and steep, and the tower holds a carillon played by hand from a room inside it. From the top you see the whole of central Amsterdam — the rings of canals, the harbours, and the churches distributed between them. The church itself carries a contradiction that sums up Amsterdam: it was built Catholic, then passed to Protestantism in the Alteration of 1578, when its altars and statues were removed, and it has remained without interior ornament ever since. And it stands in the middle of De Wallen, meaning the city's oldest church adjoins its oldest red-light district — an old adjacency rather than a recent one, and one Amsterdam has never regarded as a contradiction worth resolving. The climb is ticketed and guided.
Played by hand from a room inside the tower itself.
The church turned Protestant, its altars removed, and stayed unornamented.
The city's oldest church stands beside its best-known old district.
Oudekerksplein, De Wallen
The event in which Amsterdam moved from Catholic Spanish rule to the side of the Protestant Dutch Revolt. The Catholic city council was deposed and replaced, the churches handed to the Reformed church, and altars, statues and paintings removed from their interiors. This is why old Dutch churches look bare inside compared with those of Belgium or Italy: the whitewash and emptiness are a doctrinal choice, not neglect.
The view from here is dead centre: you see the canal rings from above rather than from their edge, which no other tower in the city gives. The guided tour explains the carillon mechanism, a genuine addition rather than filler. But if you want a wide view without stairs, the A'DAM Lookout north of the station is far easier and gives the city and the harbour together.
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