Montelbaanstoren

The bottom half of this tower was built to fire cannon from. The top half was built ninety years later because the bottom half had nothing left to do.

In the early 1500s this was outside the city. The shipyards and rope-walks lay here on open ground beyond the wall, with nothing to protect them. In 1516 Amsterdam built a squat round tower on the water to guard the yards. That is the plain brick drum you see at the bottom.

By 1600 the city had grown past it and the tower was just standing in a residential canal. Amsterdam was getting rich and wanted a skyline. So the city architect, Hendrick de Keyser, was asked to make something of it. In 1606 he put an eight-sided storey on the old drum, then a wooden lantern and a spire, and hung a clock and bells in it.

The new top was too heavy for the old foundations. In 1610 the tower began to lean, and it had to be pulled upright again and given a firmer footing.

The clock was never reliable. It struck at odd hours and the bells rang when they felt like it, and the neighbourhood named the tower Malle Jaap, Silly Jack. Rembrandt lived a few minutes from here and drew it. In his drawing he left De Keyser’s spire off.