A mélange of flavours: Amsterdam’s 750th celebration takes shape

From a new cheese to a 15 kilometre party on the A10 ring road, preparations are ramping up for the celebration of Amsterdam’s 750^th year.

At an event in Amsterdam on Friday morning, programme director Sietse Bakker called for more local ideas, sponsors and participants. “This isn’t for the city council – it’s a party for the whole city, by the whole city,” he said. “Our aim is to get as many Amsterdammers as we can excited about the jubilee, and make them feel proud of the city.”

An installation in the shape of a gigantic present is touring the different parts of Amsterdam and Weesp for a week, encouraging people to send in ideas. And – although there was no mention of modern-day expats at the event – organisers stressed that inclusion will be a major theme.

Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema, meanwhile, has said that while Amsterdam 750 has major sponsors such as Heineken and Rabobank, it still has a budget gap of €3 million.

Plans are coming together for events including a huge opening concert in the Ziggo Dome on  October 27 2024, an exhibition on the history of Amsterdam and a party on the car-free ring road on June 21. Bakker said that there will also be an effort to represent different stories about Amsterdam’s minority communities and “go deeper”.

Thank you

One event, the “spirit of Amsterdam”, aims to do this in November 2024, with a festival in different religious buildings around the city. Rob-Jan Glas, founder of the initiative, said: “What we want to do in this project in our beautiful houses of prayer is normalise a number of things in our Western society: for example, looking at the other more, maybe saying thank you, stopping for a moment, seeing these houses of worship as…something to share with the whole city.”

He added that it was important to think about all Amsterdammers, in a kinder way: “Our VIPs are the most vulnerable groups in the city. These are our heroes: people stuck at home, refugees, undocumented people, people who often unfortunately miss the party.”

Another project, Amsterdam Expo at the Westergasfabriek, aims to give a podium to women who have been important in the history of Amsterdam but whose contribution has up until now been overlooked. Judikje Kiers, director of Amsterdam Museum, which is working on the project, said: “There are far too few women’s stories in the history of Amsterdam [so we are asking people to] write us an ode, go to the site and enrich the history of all of the unknown women’s stories.”

Medicine

Food will also feature heavily in the celebrations. Patissier Holtkamp has created a special spiced raspberry and chocolate cake for Amsterdam’s 750th birthday year, while Boeren van Amstel has created a new cheese, The Amsterdammer, alongside a project to help boost biodiversity.

Artist Emin Batman’s project Tussen Tompouce en Baklava – inspired by Dutch and Turkish sweet treats – also aims to find and tell the stories of the first Turkish guest workers in the Netherlands as well as creating a new dessert mélange between them.

“These are tough times,” said mayor Halsema at the event on Friday morning. “A lot of Amsterdammers are troubled by conflicts, polarisation, worries about our future. This is a kind of medicine – and I hope that people will wake up on 28^th October 2025 feeling some faith…because we have shown each other how important it is to live life and think about the things that are beautiful.”