Begijnhof

You stepped down to get in here. The courtyard lies about a metre below the streets around it, because this is the level Amsterdam was at in the Middle Ages.

The beguines were not nuns. They were unmarried women and widows who chose to live together, pray and look after the sick, but who took no lifelong vows. A beguine kept her own property and could leave to marry if she wished. This courtyard was theirs from the 14th century.

When Amsterdam turned Protestant in 1578, the city confiscated every Catholic institution it had, except this one. The houses were the women’s private property, and the city respected that. It did take their chapel. In 1607 it was handed to English-speaking Protestants living in Amsterdam, and it has been the English Reformed Church ever since.

So the beguines did what other Catholics in the city were doing. They joined two of their houses together, opposite the church they had lost, and built a chapel inside where nothing showed from outside. It is still there, behind an ordinary front, and still in use.

The last beguine, Sister Antonia, died in 1971. Women still live in the houses, and it is still a private courtyard: the residents ask visitors to keep their voices down.