Huis met de Hoofden

The story goes that a maid, alone in the house, cut off the heads of six burglars as they climbed in one by one. The six heads on the front are something else entirely.

Count them: six heads, three on each side of the door. Amsterdam has told the story of the maid and the burglars for a very long time, and it is a good story. But look at what the heads are wearing. Five of them carry a clue. One has a laurel wreath, one has ears of ripe corn in her hair, one a winged helmet, one bunches of grapes, one a crescent moon.

They are gods. Apollo for the arts, Ceres for the harvest, Mercury for trade, Minerva for wisdom, Bacchus for wine and Diana for the hunt. It is the kind of thing a rich and well-read merchant put on his house in 1622 to tell the street who lived there.

That merchant was Nicolaas Sohier, who dealt in hosiery and loved art. The front is in the style of Hendrick de Keyser, the city’s great architect, and has always been attributed to him. But De Keyser died in 1621, so it was probably his son Pieter who saw it built.

Sohier did not enjoy it for long. In 1634 he sold the house to Louis de Geer, who had made a fortune in iron and weapons, and De Geer’s family kept it for four generations. One of their guests here was the Czech thinker Comenius, who had been driven out of his own country for his beliefs.

That history suits the present owners. Since 2017 the house has been a museum and library of books on philosophy, mysticism and free thought.