Dam Square

Dam Square centers on a massive white stone pillar reaching toward the sky, the National Monument. This open expanse serves as the historical heart of Amsterdam, marking the site where a thirteenth-century dam once held back the Amstel River. In nineteen forty-five, a crowd gathered here to celebrate the liberation from Nazi occupation. Moments after the joy began, German soldiers fired machine guns into the throng from a balcony, leaving twenty-two people dead and over a hundred wounded on the cobblestones.