An Amsterdam Introduction: From Fishing Hamlet to Trading Centre

Amsterdam is full of man-made land, and the city would slip back under the water if the Dutch stopped maintaining it. On this walking tour, you'll find out how a peat wilderness and a dam on the river Amstel became a trading powerhouse. You'll also hear why almost nothing medieval survived.

The tour starts in front of Amsterdam Central Station, built in the late 1800s on an artificial island, where a wind dial on the left turret once warned ship crews of shifting winds and tides. From there, you'll follow the waterfront past the Visitor Centre, cross to the round Schreierstoren, and follow a narrow canal towards the Zeedijk, the old sea dike that once protected the medieval city.

You'll pass the Old Church, finished in 1571 and taken over by Protestants just seven years later, and hear how giant fires in the 1400s wiped out most of the wooden medieval city. In the red-light district, you'll learn why the authorities prefer control to tolerance. The tour ends at Nieuwmarkt, a square built over a filled-in moat, beside the only fully intact medieval city gate left in Amsterdam.

On this 60-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Look inside Our Lord in the Attic, a secret Catholic church tucked into a 1600s canal house
• Spot the wooden-fronted Café Int Aepjen, where drunken sailors in the 1600s were left to sleep hanging over a rope
• Hear how Henry Hudson sailed from these docks in 1609 and helped found New Amsterdam, now New York City
• Read the gable stones that once named Amsterdam's houses, from a carpenter's hand drill to a lioness
• Learn why Amsterdam's coffee shops are technically illegal yet tolerated
• Visit Europe's oldest Chinese quarter, which began when Chinese sailors were stranded here during World War I

By the time you reach Nieuwmarkt, you'll understand how a peat wilderness turned into a trading city that still has to fight the water to exist.