Burgerweeshuis

The children carved above this gate are asking you for money. The verse beneath them says: do not walk on through this gate without helping to carry a little.

This was the way into the Burgerweeshuis, the city orphanage. Around 1580 the orphans moved into what had been the convent of Saint Lucy, and the orphanage was given the convent’s land and property. That income kept it going for centuries.

To show the Kalverstraat what lay behind, a gate was made in 1581 by the sculptor Joost Jansz. Bilhamer. He carved the relief over the arch. The verse under it is attributed to the poet Vondel and was probably added in 1634. It speaks for the children: we keep growing in number and in cost.

Not every orphan got in. The Burgerweeshuis took only the children of poorters, people who held the citizenship of Amsterdam. Foundlings and the children of the poor were not admitted. Even so, the plague filled it. In the 1620s the number of children nearly doubled.

You could pick them out in the street. Their clothes were bright red on the left side and black on the right, probably after the colours of the city’s arms, though nobody is certain. The uniform lasted until 1919.

The orphanage left in 1960, and in 1975 the Amsterdam Museum moved in. The museum itself is older: it opened in 1926 in the Waag on the Nieuwmarkt. The buildings here have been closed to visitors since 2022. Building work began in September 2026, and the museum plans to reopen in 2030. Until then it shows its collection at other places in the city.