Trippenhuis

Look at the chimneys. They are shaped like mortars, because the two brothers who built this house made their fortune selling guns.

In a city where land on the water was sold by the foot and almost everyone built narrow, the Trip brothers built this. It is two houses, one for Louis and one for Hendrick, hidden behind a single front so that it would look like one enormous palace. The middle window on each floor is false: behind it runs the wall between the two homes.

The family traded in iron, cannon and ammunition, and they sold to whoever was buying in a century when most of Europe was at war. They were not shy about it. The pediment at the top is carved with cannon barrels, and the chimneys are stone mortars pointing at the sky.

Later the house found other uses. From 1817 it held the national art collection, and for most of the 19th century, until the Rijksmuseum opened in 1885, this is where you came to see The Night Watch.

Now turn round. The little house across the canal, at number 26, is barely two and a half metres wide. The story is that the Trips’ coachman once said he would be happy with a house as wide as his masters’ front door, and that they built him one. It is probably just a story. The house is real.