Amsterdam - Kalverstraat

Must-see attractions nearby: Royal Palace Dutch National Museum Municipal Museum Van Gogh Museum Old Church Jewish Historical Museum New Church

Needless to say, the first businesses to settle in the Kalverstraat were the butchers, later followed by craftsmen, including cobblers and basket makers. In the mid-18th C. there were already more than 200 shops of all kinds here, as well as coffee shops and boarding houses. Nowadays the Kalverstraat is a pedestrian precinct and attracts up to 100,000 shoppers a day. On Saturdays the crush is frightening. It can take at least half an hour to walk from the Munt to the Dam instead of the usual 10minutes - that is if you manage to get there at all and are not swept along by the crowd in quite a different direction.