The Plantage is where Amsterdam keeps its trees and its hardest history in the same few streets, and the only honest way to walk it is to let both in. Three kilometres, mostly green, with a weight running under the leaves the whole way.
Start at Waterlooplein and walk east into the Hortus Botanicus, a working garden since 1638 — go in for the butterfly house, or read it from the gate and move on. Across the road is Wertheimpark, the oldest park in the city, and Jan Wolkers' Nooit meer Auschwitz: broken mirrors in the grass that hand you back a cracked sky. Don't rush it. From there the Esnoga — the 1675 Portuguese Synagogue — and the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a theatre made into a deportation point and now a memorial, sit a few doors apart on Plantage Middenlaan.
Then the mood lifts. Cut down to the Entrepotdok, a long terrace of converted trade warehouses, and look across the water: the flamingos of Artis are standing right there, in the middle of the city. Coffee on the quay, and tram 14 home.
