Montelbaanstoren
Sixteenth-century defensive watchtower with a tilted past, Rembrandt sketches, and a canal-side clock that famously kept its own hours.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Montelbaanstoren in Amsterdam follows a sixteenth-century watchtower that gained an elegant octagonal spire in 1606, designed by city architect Hendrick de Keyser, and began leaning within four years of its completion. You'll hear how engineers hauled the sinking foundations back upright, and why the tower's bells started keeping such unpredictable hours that Amsterdammers gave the tower a mocking nickname. Listen beside the Oudeschans canal, where the tower has stood for four centuries.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Café the Schreiertower
Medieval defence tower from fourteen eighty-seven, now a café, where Henry Hudson set sail for what became New York.
Munttoren
Medieval gate tower rebuilt in Renaissance style, famed for its Hemony carillon and emergency wartime coin mint.
Zuiderkerk
Amsterdam's first purpose-built Protestant church, a Renaissance tower tied to Rembrandt's grief and a wartime morgue.
Nieuwmarkt
Medieval city gate turned weighhouse, site of the anatomy lesson that inspired Rembrandt's most famous painting.
Beurs van Berlage
Landmark red-brick exchange hall by socialist architect Berlage, now a premier concert and event venue.
De Gooyer Windmill
Tallest wooden windmill in the Netherlands, moved to its current site in 1814 after soldiers blocked its wind.