Weigh House/Gate House

The Nieuwmarkt square is dominted by this squat medieval building called the Waag, or Weigh House, which had many functions through out the centuries. The oldest gable stone in Amsterdam adorns the facade of the tower at the corner of Zeedijk and Geldersekade. It carries the inscription MCCCCLXXXVIII de XXVIII dach in April wart d'eerste steen van dese poert gheleit. ("The first stone of this gate was laid on 28 April 1488") and at that time would have been surrounded by water and the city walls. However it could very well have been build sixty years earlier when the city was expanded, going through multiple modifications.

The Waag is the oldest remaining non-religious building in Amsterdam.

At that time it would have looked like a traditional castle gate, guarded by the city watch, where they checked cargo and collected duties and taxes. The city walls were armed with turrets and ran all the way up to the city docks. All that remains of the wall is some sandstone in the Geldersekade canal wall.

It lost it function when the city was once more expanded, the walls being knocked down from 1603-1613. In 1617 it was repurposed as a weigh house. The original weight house on Dam square had become too small for the needs of this rapidly growing city.

One job of the weigh house was to determine who were witches – if you weighed less than a specific set of weights you were burned, otherwise you were cleared, but one had to pay for that privilege, so as such many poor women would burned as witches in this very spot.

The upper floors were occupied by a number of guilds – each guild having it’s own entrance gate, the guild emblems still visible over these entrances. These builds were the blacksmith’s guild, the painters’ guild, the masons’ guild and the surgeons’ guild.

As part of the surgeons’ guild, a Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, the city’s chief physician and one of its most revered residents, performed public dissections here, and in the winter of 1631-2, dissections commonly taking place in winter because the cold kept the stench down, the young Rembrandt tramped up here to make studies for what would be his first great painting. “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.” This painting known for highlighting science, the human body and the distinctive personality of the physician, is a kind of trifecta of Dutch liberalism.

The surgeons guild never lacked for fresh bodies to experiment and practice on. A massive amount of witches, heretics, zealots and criminals were executed here. Even Napoleon installed a guillotine here during his occupation to ensure a high body count.

From here blood would always be running and based on the slope of the ground it would travel from here right down blood street – our next stop.