The Vondelpark Pavilion

The building in front of you went up between 1879 and 1881 to a design by the architect W. Hamer, as a café-restaurant with living quarters above it. The tenant lived on the top floor, over the hall where his guests sat.

A pavilion like this turned the park into a place to stay. It had been laid out for walking and riding, and only with a room where you could sit, eat and talk did it come alive in the evening as well. The crowd it drew grew more colourful than the founders had in mind, with artists, writers and anyone who preferred an evening of argument to an evening at home.

In 1972 the Netherlands Film Museum moved in. For forty years the country's film reels sat behind this front, and anyone after a silent film or a forgotten Dutch feature came to the Vondelpark. In 2012 the institute moved across the IJ under the name EYE, into a building that asks for attention just as loudly as this one.

Take the path that runs on along the pond, keeping left, until you come to a bronze man on a tall plinth.