The Vondel monument

The man on the plinth is Joost van den Vondel, and he has stood here since 1867. The sculptor Louis Royer made him, and the statue managed something statues rarely do: it gave the park its name.

At the opening two years earlier this was the Nieuwe Park, a name few people warmed to. Once the monument was in place the public began calling it Vondel's park, and that everyday usage won out over the official name.

Vondel was born in Cologne in 1587 and grew up in Amsterdam, where his father kept a silk shop on the Warmoesstraat that mostly got by on stockings. He taught himself Latin alongside the work in that shop, wrote plays the city argued over, and in 1641 turned to the Catholic faith in a city run by Protestants. He reached the age of ninety-one and outlived almost all of his children.

Around the plinth sit the figures from his plays, so the people at his feet are the people he invented.

Follow the path west along the water, until a round building appears at the edge of the pond in an open spot.