What is Amsterdam’s “duistere verleden”?
Een griezelig dagje in de Amsterdam Dungeon
A2 Dutch listening practice · Dutch · Picked for people who know a little
Het duistere verleden van Amsterdam (“Amsterdam’s dark past”) is the catch-all for the city’s grimmer chapters: public executions on de Dam, the Pestepidemie of 1664–65 (which killed about 1 in 8 Amsterdammers), the witch waagmetingen in nearby Heksenwaag Oudewater, and the East India Company’s brutal colonial trade. Today, the topic mostly lives in historische rondleidingen (historical walking tours), the Verzetsmuseum, dark-tourism formats, and a long string of city-history podcasts.
In this clip, a Dutch family vlog visits the Amsterdam Dungeon and walks through het huis van de bloedvlekken (“the house of the blood stains”), framed as “het duistere verleden van Amsterdam te beleven.”
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Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-NL 2014 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.
- ▸In Dutch history and dark-tourism content (Verzetsmuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam Museum, Heksenwaag Oudewater)
- ▸In Amsterdam tourist-board and city-guide writing (I amsterdam, De Volkskrant, Het Parool)
- ▸In Dutch popular-history TV and podcasts (Andere Tijden, VPRO, De Plantage)
- ▸In Dutch academic writing about Amsterdam’s colonial past (Universiteit van Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, NRC)