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Amsterdam walks along historic facades

  • A unique historical lens on Amsterdam
  • Engaging cultural walking tours
  • Universally relevant themes

About the book

Facade texts reveal Amsterdam's past. At least, if you know what is meant.

Some are enigmatic, others distort reality, but all tell a history that often goes back hundreds of years. The oldest facade text is on the exterior wall of the Waag. The city council announced in 1488 that the first stone of St. Anthony's Gate was laid there. The stories behind the facade texts provide many intriguing facts. They provide insight into how Amsterdam grew socially and economically from fishing village to metropolis, put forgotten individuals in the spotlight and show the many political and religious upheavals.

Amsterdamse wandelingen includes six walks through the center of Amsterdam. Each walk of about 7 kilometers takes the reader past texts on buildings that have often been given a different function or that refer to a place that no longer exists. Either way, they still tell a lot of history, if only you look at them in the right way.

228 pages, 2024

Quotes

Fred Geukes Foppen, retired engineer-journalist, with these walks, joins a venerable line of gentlemen who take the visitor to the city ‘paternally’ by the hand, [...]' - Koen Kleijn in Ons Amsterdam Oct. 2024, p. 52

'[...] Foppen provides a lot of information in his texts and photographs, allowing for a lot of looking up and reading. The texts have a high information content and I like that (and then I also want to know if there is something more to say about the roof structure at Krom Boomsloot 4, but yes, that roof structure is not a facade text). The route, the facade texts, the texts in the guide make every walk a dive into past and present. Many façade texts also reveal something about the origins of those who placed or had the text placed. [...] Fred Geukes Foppen and Uitgeverij Verloren (with a lot of history in the portfolio) have provided a wonderful addition to the many walks in Amsterdam. Head up! and to the walk on this voyage of discovery.' - Willem de Wandelaar on Willems Wonderlijke Wandelingen July 2024

'[...] This is a fun way to get to know the city better, I know from city guide Gerard Goudriaan's façade text walk “Special texts in the city”. You get to places in the city you've never been before. And you make new discoveries in streets you've cycled through a thousand times before, still unaware of that interesting, mysterious or hilarious façade text on that building you had never really consciously looked at before.[...] It's a beautiful walking guide, published by publishing house Verloren, which mainly publishes studies on medieval and patriotic history.' - www.frankwandelt.nl

About the author

Fred Geukes Foppen (1942) is a chemical engineer and holds a PhD from Utrecht University. He worked in research institutes and in the pharmaceutical industry in the Netherlands, Italy and America. From 1966 to 1981 he was a foreign correspondent in Rome and in Washington, including for the NOS Journaal, VARA and Het Vrije Volk. After his retirement, he collaborated on the project “Amsterdam Causes of Death 1854-1940,” of the Radboud University and the Stadsarchief Amsterdam, in which he managed to trace the names of the 44 victims of the bombing of the Blauwburgwal of May 11, 1940.