ABSTRACT
The inner city of Amsterdam is one of the most beautiful city centres of Europe, as much loved by its inhabitants as by the many visitors. It is a ‘built-up environment’ that is more than the sum of its buildings, streets or squares. From one point of view it is a ‘spiritual environment’ in the course of its history it has also become the expression of humanitarian values, of tolerance, democracy, humour, solidarity. Of old it is a city of human rights, of the rights of minorities, of refugees, asylum-seekers, those discriminated against. No one group or class was ever large enough to be able to dominate all the others, and it is the only place in the world where a general strike against the Nazis broke out the moment the Jews there were persecuted. ‘Get your dirty hands off our dirty Jews!’, is the most famous battle cry of its social history.
