Munttoren

Listen first. Tram bells clang across the square, bicycle wheels hiss over the stones, and somewhere above the traffic a melody begins to ring out from a tower. Look up. A slender spire rises over one of Amsterdam's busiest crossings, and its clock faces look down on the people hurrying below. This is the Munttoren, the Mint Tower. It stands at Muntplein, where the Amstel river meets the Singel canal and old Amsterdam begins to open into the canal ring.

Before we look at the details, here is a surprise that most visitors miss. Much of the square you are standing on is not really a square at all. A large part of Muntplein is a bridge, built wide enough to carry trams, cars, bikes and crowds over the water of the Singel. Walk to the edge and look down. You will see the canal slipping underneath the traffic. The tower stands right at this meeting point of water and road, which is exactly where a city gate once stood.

That gate is the real beginning of the story. In the late Middle Ages, Amsterdam was a walled town, much smaller than the city you see today. A defensive wall and moat ran around it, and travellers entered through fortified gates. One of these was the Regulierspoort, named after a nearby monastery of a religious order called the Regulars. The gate was built in the late fifteenth century. It guarded the route into the city from the south, and its heavy brick tower watched over the water.

Now look carefully at the bottom of the Munttoren. The thick, sturdy lower section, made of dark brick, is the part that survives from that medieval gate. It looks plainer and heavier than the spire above it, and that difference is the clue. You are looking at two different centuries stacked on top of each other. The lower half was built to defend a town. The upper half was built to decorate a city that no longer needed its walls.

What happened in between? In 1618, a fire destroyed most of the old gate. The lower part of the tower survived the flames. By then, Amsterdam was growing fast. Trade with the wider world was bringing wealth into the city, and new canals were being planned beyond the old walls. A defensive gate made little sense anymore. So instead of rebuilding a fortification, the city chose to give the surviving tower a new and more elegant crown.

That crown was designed by Hendrick de Keyser, the leading architect and sculptor of Amsterdam in the early seventeenth century. His work shaped the look of the Dutch Golden Age, the period when the Netherlands became one of the richest trading nations in Europe. You can find his towers and churches across the city. Here he added the open, ornamented upper section and the pointed spire around 1620. Notice how it seems lighter, almost delicate, compared with the brick base.

Let your eyes travel slowly upward. Above the brick, the clock faces look out in several directions, so the time could be read from different streets and canals. Higher still, the tower narrows into an open lantern, a structure with openings that let the light and the sound pass through. At the very top, the spire finishes with a decorative point. Against a grey Amsterdam sky, the dark details stand out sharply. On a clear day, the gilded touches catch the sun.

So why is it called the Mint Tower, when it was built as a gate? Here is the second surprise. In 1672, the Dutch Republic faced invasion from several directions at once. The Dutch still call it the Rampjaar, which means the Disaster Year. War made it hard to move silver and coins safely between cities. For a short time, Amsterdam struck its own coins in the building next to this tower. The minting did not last long, but the name stayed for centuries.

Now listen again to the bells. The tower holds a carillon, a set of tuned bells played together to create melodies. Carillons are a proud tradition in the Low Countries, the region of the Netherlands and Belgium. Many Dutch towers use them to mark the hours with music rather than a single chime. If you wait here for a while, you will hear the bells ring out across the square. Sometimes a carillon player performs live, and the music travels far over the water.

At the foot of the tower stands a smaller building, once the guardhouse connected to the old gate. Today it has a very different role, serving as a shop for visitors. It is worth noticing how modest it looks next to the tower. Together, the two buildings show how Amsterdam reuses its past. The city rarely tears down an old structure when it can give that structure a new job instead.

Turn around slowly and take in the neighbourhood. To one side, the Rokin runs north toward Dam Square, following the line of the old Amstel river. Close by, the narrow shopping street called the Kalverstraat begins. In the other direction, the Amstel river opens wide, with boats passing under its bridges. And along the Singel, just beside the tower, the flower market starts. Its stalls float on the canal, selling tulip bulbs, cut flowers and plants.

It is easy to treat the Munttoren as a landmark you simply pass on the way to somewhere else. Thousands of people do exactly that every day. They rush past on bicycles and trams, barely looking up. But this tower has watched the city change from a walled medieval town into a global trading port, and then into the modern capital around you. For centuries, it marked the edge of Amsterdam. Now it stands in the middle of it.

A practical note while you are here. This is a busy traffic junction, so watch carefully for trams and cyclists before you step into the road. Cyclists in Amsterdam move quickly and expect pedestrians to stay off the red bike lanes. For a calmer view, walk a few steps along the water. From the bridge over the Amstel, or from the edge of the Singel, you can see the whole tower reflected in the canal.

Before you move on, take one last look up. Find the line where the heavy medieval brick ends and Hendrick de Keyser's lighter spire begins. That line holds four centuries of change. Then listen for the bells one more time. As you walk away, toward the flowers, the river or the shops, the music will follow you for a while... and then the sound of the city will slowly take its place.