Westerkerk

Somewhere under this church, Rembrandt van Rijn is buried. We know he was interred here on October 8, 1669, but the exact location of his grave has been lost — the number was never properly recorded, and no one thought the greatest painter of the Dutch Golden Age was worth a marked tomb. He died broke, after all. His lover Hendrickje Stoffels and his son Titus are also buried here in similarly anonymous graves.

The Westerkerk was built between 1620 and 1631, designed by Hendrick de Keyser and completed by his son Pieter after Hendrick's death. At 87 meters, its tower is the tallest church tower in Amsterdam, topped by the blue, red, and gold Imperial Crown of Austria — a gift from Emperor Maximilian I in 1489 for the city's loyalty. The crown has nothing to do with the church and everything to do with Amsterdam's talent for collecting powerful friends.

The building itself was revolutionary: one of the first purpose-built Protestant churches in the Netherlands and still the largest church in the country built specifically for Protestant worship. When it was consecrated in 1631, there was no organ, because strict Calvinists considered instrumental music profane. It took decades of deliberation before an organ was finally installed in 1686.

Anne Frank mentions the Westerkerk tower constantly in her diary. From the attic of her hiding place at Prinsengracht 263, she could see the clock face and hear the carillon chiming every quarter hour. She wrote that the bells were a comfort — proof that the outside world was still ticking along while hers had shrunk to a few small rooms.