Brilliant AddressesBrilliant Addresses / Netherlands / Amsterdam
Quarter · Netherlands

Grachtengordel

in Amsterdam
Portrait

Three canals dug outward from the medieval town in a single seventeenth-century project, with the plots on the Herengracht sold to the richest buyers and taxed on their width, which is why the houses are narrow and deep. The whole ring is a UNESCO inscription and still residential.

This is a quarter, not an entry in the atlas. It resolves upward to the city that holds it.