With its central location, Nieuwmarkt is a favorite meeting place and is surrounded by outdoor bars, cafes and restaurants; it's never hard to find a congenial spot to sit back and watch Amsterdam's trendier denizens go by.
The Nieuwmarkt (New Market) is dominated by De Waag (the Weighing House), an impressive, turreted castle, the former St. Anthony's Gate, Having lost its defensive purpose when the city tore down its medieval walls around 1600, it was subsequently used as a weighing house and as a guild-hall by the bricklayers, the painters and the surgeons.
The doctors built a theatre inside for the public dissection of human corpses. Indeed, this was where Rembrandt painted his famous group portrait of that gruesome process.
In later years the building housed the Amsterdam Historical Museum and the Jewish Historical Museum. The open space around the Waag has always been a market, specializing in herbs and spices.
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