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A fortified tower, the Montelbaanstoren was built in 1512 on the eastern edge of Amsterdam, just outside the city wall. Its original purpose was to defend the Dutch fleet; now, more prosaically, it houses the Amsterdam water authority. The open-work steeple was added by the ubiquitous Hendrick de Keyser in 1606, when the city fathers felt that they could at last afford the icing on the cake. It overlooks the lovely Oude Schans, a canal that also dates from the early 16th century, dug to improve access for ships.

This vast open square has been a marketplace since the 15th century, and is still the scene of a Sunday antiques market in summer. Alone in the middle stands the bulky Waag (1488), bristling with turrets. The eastern gate in the city’s defences, it was originally called St Antoniespoort. In the 17th century it became a weigh-house and home to numerous guilds, including the surgeons’. It was here that Rembrandt painted his famousAnatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp , now in the Mauritshuis, The Hague. There were few problems acquiring bodies for dissection, since public executions took place in the Nieuwmarkt.

The oldest church in Amsterdam has been altered and extended over the years, producing a heavenly jumble of architectural styles from medieval to Renaissance (see Oude Kerk).

The world’s oldest profession aptly occupies Amsterdam’s oldest quarter, de Walletjes (“the little walls”), bordered by Zeedijk, Kloveniersburgwal, Damstraat and Warmoesstraat. Today, the district is one of the city’s greatest tourist attractions, with scantily clad prostitutes, pouting or indifferent, sitting in windows or lolling in doorways along Oudezijds Voorburgwal and the lanes off it. At night these lanes become the haunts of junkies and pickpockets, and are best avoided.

With the Dutch penchant for clever wordplay, the Stadhuis-Muziektheater is better known as “Stopera” because it combines thestadhuis (town hall) with the headquarters of the city opera and ballet companies. A brutal design in red brick, marble and glass, it was built in 1987 amid intense controversy, since scores of medieval houses, among Jodenbuurt’s few remnants, had to be destroyed in the process. In the passage between Stopera’s two buildings, a bronze button indicates the exact NAP (Normaal Amsterdams Peil ) water level.