The Jordaan’s narrow streets and small blocks grew beside the grand canal ring as a neighborhood of workshops and modest homes. Its present cafés and shops sit within a district shaped by centuries of working life and renewal.
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Café fronts give way to narrow side streets, and the Jordaan’s scale feels different from the broad canals beside it. The district took shape during Amsterdam’s early seventeenth-century expansion, alongside the more prestigious canal belt. Craftspeople, small traders, and workers lived and worked here, often in compact homes and workshops.
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- The Jordaan developed during the seventeenth-century city expansion beginning in 1613.
- Craftspeople and small traders lived in the district alongside workshops.
- Archaeological excavations in Konijnenstraat uncovered seventeenth-century household remains.
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