Restaurant-Café In de Waag

This guide to Restaurant-Café In de Waag in Amsterdam opens on the morning of January 31, 1632, with the execution of a Leiden thief named Aris Kindt, and follows his body to the building's upper floor for the surgeons' guild's annual public dissection. It traces the building itself from its 1488 start as the city's stone gatehouse to the winter afternoon when a young painter recently arrived from Leiden stood among the paying spectators. That painter, Rembrandt van Rijn, had been commissioned by the guild for a reason the guide takes its time getting to.