Huis aan 3 grachten
Huis aan 3 grachten stands in Amsterdam where the Grimburgwal, Oudezijds Voorburgwal, and Oudezijds Achterburgwal meet. This seventeenth-century canal house presents three façades, each with its own stepped gable, in the Dutch Renaissance style.
Most of the building dates from around 1610, while archaeological research places some parts in the second quarter of the sixteenth century. A national monument, it has housed merchant families, a bookstore, and the publishing house Uitgeverij Huis aan de Drie Grachten. During the Second World War, the bookstore secretly printed poetry and other literature that could not be published openly. Restoration in 1909 added stepped gables, crossbar windows, and a sandstone entrance based on a 1675 painting by Gerrit Berckheyde.
A renovation in 2005 uncovered a hidden compartment above a mantelpiece, containing wartime manuscripts and correspondence. An old stone sign still bears the words “Fluweelen Burgwal”, recalling the district’s former nickname, Velvet Canal.
- City
- Amsterdam
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Image: JvhertumPublic domain 
Image: JvhertumPublic domain
Take this page with you
The myTuur app is free, and once you are standing at a spot its story starts by itself.
Spots like this one are the stops myTuur strings into tours through Amsterdam. In the app, each story begins where you stand: walk up to a spot and it starts, read it on screen or listen as you go, then follow the route to the next one.
What is myTuur?
myTuur is a free city-guide app. Its tours are built from spots, and each spot carries a story that starts when you get there, to read or to listen to as you like.