Doopsgezinde kerk

Today was Open Monumentendag in Amsterdam, which some moron at the municipal tourist office translated to Heritage Day for foreign tourists. It means that a number of monumental buildings are open to the public for free. I thought it'd be nice to visit the largest ones, being two churches and a synagogue.

This is the Mennonite Church, what you get when you take the outside walls of an ordinary canal house but instead build a church on the inside. These schuilkerken or 'clandestine churches' were common in the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century, when faiths other than the Reformed church were not allowed to build real churches with towers and such. Nevertheless they could build discrete churches like this, for the government realised they couldn't totally prohibit all other religions.

I also visited the Portuegese Synagogue which has been restored recently, but I thought the pictures I took were a bit disapointing (the windows became much too bright, like the picture on the left of the wikipedia page). It felt kind of special, I had never been to a synagogue or wore a kippah :P. The Portuguese and Spanish jews this synagogue was from were mainly well-to-do merchants and hence this was the largest synagogue in Europe at the time.

Finally I went to the Westerkerk, especially since you could get entrance into the tower for some great sights. Unfortunately, it was booked full for the whole day already.