Amsterdam Centraal

Before the 1870s you would be standing in the harbour. Amsterdam built its station in the water, and in doing so shut itself off from the sea that had made it rich.

For six centuries the city looked out over open water here. Ships anchored in the IJ, and from the quay you could see masts all the way to the horizon. Then the railway came, and the government in The Hague decided the station belonged right in front of the old town.

Amsterdam’s council had wanted it somewhere else, and many in the city thought the plan a catastrophe. The government got its way. Engineers raised three islands out of the harbour, drove 8,687 wooden piles into the mud and laid the tracks across the city’s front door. The view was gone for good.

The building was given to Pierre Cuypers, who was finishing the Rijksmuseum at the same time, which is why the two look like relatives. He dressed the station as a city gate. In place of the old harbour entrance, travellers would now arrive through a brick palace covered in reliefs about trade, shipping and industry.

The new ground did not behave. It sank under the weight of the building while the work was still going on, and the station opened years late, in 1889.