Waag

The Waag stands in Amsterdam as a fifteenth-century architectural landmark and the city’s oldest surviving secular building. Its story begins as Sint Antoniespoort, a gate in Amsterdam’s medieval defensive wall. The gate later functions as a weigh house, where merchants bring goods for official weighing and trade administration. Thick tower walls preserve that defensive past. The raised Nieuwmarkt hides part of the original gate below street level, making the building appear shorter than its structure. A covered space between the gates creates an inner courtyard. Guilds including blacksmiths, painters, masons and surgeons occupy the upper floors, leaving emblems above their separate entrances. The surgeons use an anatomical theatre for lessons. Hendrick de Keyser’s sculpture marks the masons’ entrance, while Theatrum Anatomicum identifies the surgeons’ doorway. Rembrandt includes the Waag in The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp.

Its later history includes a fire station, museum, city archive and workshop for oil lamps. A guillotine once stands outside the Waag building. Restoration reopens the cellars, adds a wooden eastern awning and returns the building to Nieuwmarkt’s centre. Soft ground still affects the Waag’s supporting towers. The upper floors house Waag Society, while a restaurant-café occupies the ground floor. The Waag is listed as wheelchair accessible for visitors. This national monument brings medieval defence, commerce, science and modern culture together around Amsterdam’s Nieuwmarkt.