Oude Stad Zentrum, the Old Town Centre

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Entry posted by dazflint · June 2, 2016

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The first entry in our Pieterdam city journal introduced you to the area around the Oudekade, the Old Quays. We finished with a visit to the imposing Sintpieterskathedraal (below). But there's much more to the historic Old Town!

Like many Dutch cities, Pieterdam is built on a series of islands, some artificial and some man-made, divided by a series of canals. This network of tree-lined canals makes up the picturesque Old Town (Oude Stad). The picture below shows the whole of the Oude Stad, stretching back from the quayside we visited last time. Notice the City Hall, Cathedral and famous Pieterbrugge all in the foreground:

As you can see, the Oude Stad occupies several square kilometers. It is framed by the river Vos to the South (the left of the picture), the Oudekade or Old Quays to the East (the foreground in this picture), and to the North the wide Centraalgracht (Central Canal, to the right in the picture), which even today forms an important thoroughfare for water-buses. You can see one here in the foreground!

The Old Town is split across several islands, each with their own unique character. First of all let's visit the Stad Zentrum, the proper Town Center. This is the area immediately behind the Oudekade, the district where we find City Hall, the Cathederal and the rest...

The Stad Zentrum is characterised by a blend of traditional Dutch architecture, and more contemporary buildings including high-rise housing and office buildings. Traditional canal-side properties are much sought-after, so for the most part the more contemporary developments are restricted to the interior of the two islands which make up the Oude Stad Zentrum.

Here is a row of classic Dutch town-houses, which line the side of the Centraalgracht (Central Canal):

You can also get a feel for the typical Dutch weather, which is mild and wet the whole year round!

As well as hosting the City Hall and Cathedral, the Oude Stad Zentrum houses a museum of International importance: the West Hollandmuseum.

Similar to the famous Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the West Hollandmuseum was built by the same architect (Pierre Cuypers) in 1889. The intricate Neo-renaissance architectural details are truly stunning, and can only be truly appreciated up close:

The West Hollandmuseum is a credit to the city, attracting thousands of tourists every year and serving as a thriving cultural hub day and night:

Moving on from the Oude Stad Zentrum, we come to the 'other half' of Old Pieterdam: The Haartje, or 'little heart' - so called for the tiny but historically important Kerk van het Heilige Hart, the Church of the Sacred Heart...

If the grand Sintpieterskathedraal (Saint Peter's Cathedral) is the centre of Catholic life in the city, the Kerk van het Heilige Hart - affectionately known simply as the Haartje - is the centre of Pieterdam's Protestant life. The church lends its name to the canal which it sits beside, and in turn, to the two islands (Nordhaartje and Zuidhaartje) on the North and South sides of the canal.

These two islands have a slightly different character. The Zuidhaartje is famous for its enclosed, leafy courtyards and green spaces, with private and communal gardens sitting amongst the grid-like city blocks:

Meanwhile the Nordhaartje is more modern and densely built, lacking these informal green spaces. Partly this is a result of post-war planning decisions, which involved building a large highway - the Haartjeweg - straight through the middle of the Nordhaartje:

The image above nicely illustrates the difference between the quiet, leafy Zuidhaartje (to the left) and the modern, more densely populated Nordhaartje. Yet both districts 'thin out' as they approach the edge of the wide Pieterdamgraacht, which separates the far end of the city from the surrounding countryside:

Now we've taken in the Oude Stad Zentrum, and the two sides of the Haartje, there's just one more part of the Old Town to visit - yet it's a bit of a contradiction, because very little of it dates back more than fifty years or so. This is Rivieroever, the Riverside:

This long-shot gives a good sense of the Rivieroever and why it wasn't developed until recently. It is geographically isolated to the South-West of the city and as its name suggests, it lines the riverside. Without intensive water management, this area is liable to flooding. You can see to the top of the image, blocks of traditional canal-side buildings which were built along the Flaamsegracht (Flemish Canal) in the 18th-19th centuries. These are on higher ground; the rest of the area was not developed until after World War Two. And yet it was always inevitable that the Rivieroever would be developed some day - the Haartjeweg cuts right through it linking the rest of the Old Town with the docklands and the mainline railway station, both of which sit far from the city on the South side of the river.

The image above highlights the kind of low-cost, low-rise housing which has spread across the Rivieroever since the second half of the 20th century. You can also make out the Vosweg, a link-road completed only in the 1990's which connect the Haartjeweg bridge with the city's Central Business District, allowing traffic to bypass the busy Old Town.

Though most housing in Riveieroever is low-rise and often self-built, there are some high-rise developments on the riverfront proper, which significantly raise the population density of the district. At the same time as the Vosweg bypass was being contemplated, it was also decided to bring an extension of the tramline B to connect the district directly to the Central Business District.

With all this talk of the Central Business District, our next journal installment will take us to that area of the city, and the surrounding Oosterpolder.

To sign off with, here is an aerial shot of the whole Oude Stad Zentrum which we have visited today. To the right is the Oudekade Old Quays, where we began; the middle and top-middle islands are the Stad Zentrum, the Town Center proper; to the top left is the Nordhaartje with the Haartjeweg running down through it, and the Zuidhaartje below that, on the mid-left. Stretching across the very bottom of the picture is the Rivieroever, with its widely-spaced modern housing in sharp contrast to the other island districts. And all that dense development on the far right of the image, beyond the Oudekade - that is the Central Business District, which we shall visit next time. Dank je Wel!