The House on the Three Canals in Amsterdam by Jeroen de Jongh Photography

About "The House on the Three Canals in Amsterdam"

by Jeroen de Jongh Photography

About the artwork

Near the entrance of the former Binnengasthuis (until 1981 the largest hospital in Amsterdam's city centre) stands the famous Huis aan de Drie Grachten, a 17th-century canal house in Amsterdam. It is a double house in Dutch Renaissance style, with a stepped gable on each canal. The property has national monument status, but it is also an ordinary residence and therefore not open to the public. The house owes its name to the fact that it is surrounded by canals on three sides: the Grimburgwal on the south side, Oudezijds Voorburgwal on the west side and Oudezijds Achterburgwal on the east side.

The current house dates from around 1610, but archaeological research has shown that the oldest elements of the building date from the second quarter of the 16th century.

In 1909, a major renovation took place. The aim was to restore the original 17th-century situation, based on a painting by Gerrit Berckheyde. The building was given new stepped gables, cross windows and a sandstone entrance gate. These parts had been demolished in the 18th century. Parts of the interior that had been added over the centuries were removed. The house was restored to its original 17th-century state in 1990, and a second restoration took place in 2005, which included building history research.

During the Second World War, August Aimé Balkema's bookshop, which had been located in the House on the Three Canals since 1936, was used as a clandestine printing and publishing house Five Pound Press of poetry collections and other literature. A hidden room above one of the fireplaces possibly served as a hiding place for people in hiding. In this room, discovered during renovation in 2005, a box of archival materials was found dating from the war years. The premises remained a bookshop until 2002.