This Is How the Jordaan Sings

The red awnings hang out over the pavement and can be seen from a long way off, and behind that facade a record called Zo zingt de Jordaan was cut on 8 November 1966, with the singers you saw in bronze on the square earlier. The cafe was four months old at the time.

Nol and Miep Uilenbroek had bought the existing cafe Huisman on the first of July that year and put their own name above the door. It was a success from the start and has stayed in the family ever since, now into its fourth generation. The motto still hangs there: Cafe Nol, altijd lol, which promises fun every single time.

By day it looks like any other cafe in the street, apart from those awnings. Once it gets dark the neon comes on and everything inside turns red, from the leather bar and the chandeliers to the wallpaper and the lace curtains in the windows. Anyone walking past while the singing is going on hears it come straight out onto the pavement.

Nol opens in the evening, so during the day the facade is as far as you get. Why the brown cafe matters so much to Amsterdammers, and what goes on inside one, is told in our walk De Bruine Kroegen.

We follow the Westerstraat east to the Prinsengracht, where a square folds itself around an octagonal church.