Essential Amsterdam [antikvár]

The picturesque canals and the houses that line them are a principal part of Amsterdam's attraction to visitorsINTRODUCTIONA thousand years ago Amsterdam was but a fishing village, out on the desolate marshes where two rivers met. The first settlers struggled to keep back the sea (an ever present danger to Holland) and created a dam on the Amstel river. So the name Amstel-Dam was born from that very first sea wall. Modem Amsterdam, large and lively, still has echoes of those early days and it keeps its feet and its feelings very close to water, for, of course, it is a city of canals. Do not be taken in by the banal travel brochure description of Amsterdam as 'the Venice of the North', however, for Amsterdam is anything but Venetian - it is as unigue a city as its Belgian neighbour, Bruges, which is often saddled with a similar description. Amsterdam is no more like proud Venice than Venice is like Amsterdam - the city may have been built upon marsh and bog reclaimed from a greedy sea, but there the similarity ends. Amsterdam is uniguely itself, as