Albert Cuyp Market grew from street trading in the expanding De Pijp into one of Amsterdam’s best-known markets. Its stalls occupy a former industrial waterway, and its history holds both the everyday ingenuity of vendors and the rupture of wartime persecution.
Quick facts
The city first permitted Saturday-evening trading on Albert Cuypstraat in 1905; a formal daytime market followed in 1912.
Before housing replaced the industrial landscape, the Zaagmolensloot and 18 sawmills occupied this area.
Jewish traders were estimated to make up about a third of the market’s sellers before the Second World War; occupation barred them from trading.
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Guide
Albert Cuyp Market is not housed in a hall: it occupies the eastern stretch of Albert Cuypstraat, between Ferdinand Bolstraat and Van Woustraat, in Amsterdam’s De Pijp. That street setting is part of its story. Before the neighborhood filled with housing, a waterway called the Zaagmolensloot ran here through a polder. From 1638, sawmills lined it; timber was cut into planks and carried away by the Amstel. Eighteen mills once stood in the industrial landscape.
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