“Consider the archetypal monuments of certain cities, the buildings that seem to give clues to their souls. Think of the association of Paris with Notre Dame Cathedral or the Eiffel Tower, of London with Big Ben, of New York with the Empire State Building. Amsterdam, at first blush, has no such monument.
People come to Amsterdam to see hundreds of far less extravagant buildings that line its canals: individual homes.
Paris’ grandiosity is to Amsterdam’s canal house cityscape what mythological figures are to ordinary people. Amsterdam relates to who we are today: it is, in a sense, where we began, as modern people who consider individual human beings to be more important than institutions.
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