20 January: Amsterdam

On this date in 1648 The cornerstone of Amsterdam town hall was laid. 10 things you might not know about Amsterdam.

1. The name comes from a dam which was built on the river Amstel after floods in 1170 and 1173. Amsterdam was a fishing village back then. The city has a nickname, too - Mokum, which is Hebrew for city or a place. It got the nickname thanks to a large Jewish population.
2. The three Xs on the coat of arms are St Andrew's crosses, a link to its past as a fishing town.
3. Amsterdam is built on 11 million 15 to 20 metre long wooden poles driven into the ground. An average house has about ten of these, but Central Station has about 9,000.
4. There are 881,000 Bicycles in Amsterdam. That's more bicycles than people, as the population is in the region of 799,400. About 25,000 bikes end up in the canals every year, but only about 8,000 are officially pulled out.
5. Talking of canals, Amsterdam has more canals than Venice - over 100km of them, and 1,281 bridges, three time as many as Venice. Hence another nickname for Amsterdam, “Venice of the North”. Where there are canals there will also be houseboats. Amsterdam has over 3,000 of them, including one exclusively for stray Cats.
6. The majority of Amsterdam is below sea level, 6.7 metres below sea level at its lowest point. The airport is 4 metres below sea level.
7. Amsterdam has more museums per square metre than any other city in the world. These include the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum and Anne Frank's house.
8. Amsterdam has the oldest stock exchange in the world, dating back to 1602, when it was set up by the Dutch East India Company so it could trade its own shares.
9. There is the famous red light district, of course, and Coffee shops which sell rather more than coffee. While soft drugs can be legally bought and consumed in a coffee shop, you won't be able to buy dope in a bar because the policy is that soft drugs and alcohol mustn't be sold together.
10. I don't know if the fact that Amsterdam residents are the second largest consumers of coffee in the world is connected to that or not! 3.2 cups of coffee per day are drunk by the average Amsterdam resident.

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