Museum Amstelkring

NileGuide Expert tip:

In a walk from the Old Church to Central Station, you can follow Catholic Amsterdam history through the three churches once named after St. Nicholas, the patron saint of Amsterdam: The Old Church, Our Dear Lord in the Attic, and the current St. Nicholas Church.

Description:

• Although the Dutch tolerance policy (gedoogbeleid) is best known today as a policy allowing licensed shops to sell cannabis as long as they don't advertise that they are doing so, this tolerance policy is actually as old as the city itself and was for 200 years the means of survival for Amsterdam's outlawed Catholic community. Between the Protestant Reformation of 1578 and the Catholic Emancipation of 1799, Catholic worship was considered illegal but was tolerated in hidden churches around this city, as long as the building was not visibly a church from the outside. This museum was once the canal house of wealthy Catholic merchant Jan Hartman, and his former bedroom, salon, and kitchen show how he and others like him lived during the seventeenth century. But, the centerpiece of the museum, commonly called "Our Dear Lord in the Attic," is the three-story, 150-seat Catholic church in its top floors. This church was the parish church for the Catholics of the City Centre for over 200 years and, as the main Catholic church during this time, was called St. Nicholas Church after the patron saint of Amsterdam. Visiting this museum gives a glimpse not only into the lives of Golden Age canal-dwelling merchants, but also the lives of the vibrant, although oppressed, Catholic community of Amsterdam during this time. The church was reopened as a museum in 1888, one year after the new St. Nicholas Church was completed across from what is now the Centraal Station, making the Museum Amstelkring the second-oldest museum in Amsterdam after the Rijksmuseum.
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