De Waag began as Amsterdam’s Sint Anthoniespoort, a fortified eastern gate built in 1488. After the city expanded, it became a public weighing house in 1617, with guild rooms above and an anatomical theatre added in 1691. Its clustered towers trace centuries of changing city life.
Quick facts
De Waag began as the Sint Anthoniespoort; an inscription records the laying of its first stone on 28 April 1488.
Amsterdam’s city council ordered the former gate converted into a public weighing house in 1617, after the Nieuwmarkt square was formed in 1614.
The surgeons’ guild’s anatomical theatre occupied a purpose-built central tower completed in 1691; Rembrandt’s 1632 anatomy painting predates that theatre.
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Guide
De Waag stands in the middle of Nieuwmarkt, but its towers make more sense when you imagine water and a wall where the square is now. The building began as the Sint Anthoniespoort, an eastern gate in Amsterdam’s late-medieval fortifications. A municipal archaeological and building-history investigation describes a complex with a main gate and a foregate, each flanked by towers. A stone inscription on the building records the laying of the gate’s first stone on 28 April 1488.
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