The Jordaan: What It Is and What It Isn’t

The Jordaan is the neighbourhood that visitors to Amsterdam love most and that locals have complicated feelings about. It’s beautiful — the canal houses, the hofjes, the Noordermarkt on Saturday mornings. It’s also extremely aware of its own beauty, which is a particular kind of problem.

What the Jordaan actually is

The Jordaan runs west of the main canal belt, between the Prinsengracht and the Lijnbaansgracht. It was built in the seventeenth century as a working-class district — narrow houses, small courtyards. The hofjes — small almshouse courtyards you can step into from the street — are the best-kept quiet secret in a neighbourhood that isn’t really secret anymore. The Begijnhof in the Centrum is the famous one; the Jordaan has several that get far fewer people through them.

The Noordermarkt on Saturday morning is the reason to be in the neighbourhood. Organic produce, bread, cheese — it’s genuinely good, relatively priced for locals, and the market around the Noorderkerk is one of the few markets in Amsterdam that still functions as a neighbourhood market rather than a tourist one. Go early. It starts at 9am and the best stalls thin out by 11.

What it isn’t

The Jordaan is not undiscovered, not authentically local in the way it markets itself, and not cheap. Restaurants here are expensive relative to most of the city and quality varies more than the atmosphere suggests. The streets around Elandsgracht and Rozengracht get extremely busy on summer weekends.

It is, however, a genuinely nice place to walk on a weekday morning in spring when the tourists are elsewhere and the light on the canals is what it is. The canal houses are real. The architecture is real. The Westerkerk tower is worth the climb. These are not performances — they’re just shared now with more people than the neighbourhood was designed for.

If you’re staying there, you’re staying in the right place. If you want to understand Amsterdam, you need to also spend time somewhere else.