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Map of Amsterdam
A half-moon of canals, one inside another, wrapped around the centre. It is one of the most recognisable city layouts in the world, and on a line-drawn map the water does almost all the work.
What you see on the map
The canal belt. The great concentric canals the city dug in the seventeenth century: Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht, with the Singel on the inside. On the map they are parallel blue arcs, crossed by smaller canals running towards the centre like the spokes of a wheel.
The medieval centre. Inside the half-moon, the oldest part: long, tightly packed blocks without the order of the ring.
The IJ. To the north, the broad body of water of the harbour, with Central Station built on artificial islands on its shore.
The Jordaan and the outer districts. West of the ring, a finer pattern; and beyond the last canal, the extensions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Which scale and paper suit it
1:15,000 on a 30 cm square, as in the picture, takes in the whole half-moon with the IJ at the top. At that scale every building is drawn.
1:8,000 on A3 keeps to the ring and the centre: every canal house, every bridge.
The circle is its format. The layout is already circular: centred slightly south of the station, the canals follow the edge of the frame.
Make it yours
Open the example and move the frame: go down towards the museum quarter and the Vondelpark, or cross the IJ to Amsterdam Noord.
Change all the colours at once with a theme (black ink, sepia, night, blueprint) and download it as PNG. With a free account, also element by element, at 600 dpi, as vector PDF and as SVG.
