Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the capital city of the Netherlands.

Canals run all through the city, like streets made of water. Boats float along them, and some people live on houseboats. Tall, narrow houses stand side by side.

Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands, a low, flat country beside the North Sea. About 942,000 people lived there in 2026. The government, though, meets in another city, The Hague.

The city is famous for its canals. They divide the old center into about 90 islands, and the city has about 1,300 bridges. Hundreds of houseboats line the canals. Parts of Amsterdam are below sea level, on land won from the sea, marshes and lakes, so dikes and dams are very important here.

Amsterdam lies in flat, low-lying land, mainly on the south bank of the IJ, an inland arm of the former Zuiderzee (now the IJsselmeer), linked by canal to the North Sea. The Amstel River flows north through the city to the IJ. Parts of the city are below sea level, some on land reclaimed from the sea or from marshes and lakes. The city covers 165 km² and had 941,927 residents in 2026 (Statistics Netherlands).

Amsterdam is the nominal capital and the country's commercial and financial center, but the seat of government is The Hague, and the royal family only occasionally stays at the Royal Palace on the Dam. Britannica notes that the city lacks monumental architecture: no grand parade squares or triumphal arches, but narrow, busy streets, gabled houses and some 90 canal-bound islands crossed by about 1,300 bridges and viaducts.

Amsterdam has three big canals that curve around the old city.

Beside them stand tall old houses with pointed tops. The Royal Palace is on a big square called the Dam. The Rijksmuseum is full of famous paintings.

Three great canals, the Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht, curve around the old center like rings in a spiderweb. They were dug in the 1600s and are lined with fine old merchants' houses. In 2010 UNESCO made the canal ring a World Heritage Site.

On the Dam, the main square, stands the Royal Palace, built as the city hall in the 1600s. Rembrandt is buried in the West Church, and his house is now a museum. The Rijksmuseum, built from 1876 to 1885, holds great Dutch art. Central Station stands on an artificial island, and at Prinsengracht 263 is the hiding place of Anne Frank.

The Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht, laid out under the Three Canals Plan of 1612 outside the old Singel, form with smaller radial canals a spiderweb pattern extended east along the harbor and west into the Jordaan during the Golden Age; UNESCO inscribed the Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area inside the Singelgracht in 2010. The old town keeps the Old Church (13th century), the New Church (begun in the 15th century) and, beside it, Jacob van Campen's 17th-century city hall in classical Palladian style, now the Royal Palace.

Other landmarks include the Mint Tower, the South Church (1611), the West Church (1631), where Rembrandt is buried, the Portuguese Synagogue (1671) and the Rembrandt House in the former Jewish quarter. The building boom of the late 19th century added the Rijksmuseum (1876–85), Central Station (1889), on an artificial island in the IJ, the Concertgebouw (1888) and the Stedelijk Museum (1895). In 1942 Anne Frank's family went into hiding in the annex at Prinsengracht 263, where she kept her diary until they were arrested on August 4, 1944.

People in Amsterdam come from many places.

Some families have lived there a long time. Others came from countries far away. You can eat Indonesian, Chinese and many other foods. Many people live in apartments by the canals.

Amsterdam has welcomed newcomers for more than 400 years. About half of the people are of Dutch background, and many families came from places such as Suriname, Indonesia, Morocco and Turkey. The city is known for its many Indonesian and Chinese restaurants.

Most people work in services such as business, banking, health care and tourism. Amsterdam has famous museums, the Concertgebouw concert hall and the University of Amsterdam. With no high-rise buildings or big highways in its center, the city keeps what Britannica calls a human scale.

Britannica calls Amsterdam small compared with most capitals: after World War II it had more than 800,000 people; numbers fell until the mid-1980s and have generally risen since, through natural increase and immigration. About half the residents are of Dutch origin, about one-tenth of Surinamese origin, with large Moroccan and Turkish minorities; the city has received immigrants since the 16th century, more recently from the former Dutch empire, as guest workers, as employees of international firms and as asylum seekers.

Only about one-tenth of the workforce is in manufacturing. Trade and transport provide about one-fifth of jobs, banking and insurance about one-eighth, health, cultural and social services about one-sixth, and tourism about one-tenth. All the major Dutch banks are headquartered here. Britannica attributes the city's appeal to business to its accessibility, culture and human scale, the result of an absence of high-rise buildings and multilane highways.