Jordaan Nine Streets Shopping Area
The streets here were named for what was once processed in them — hides, deer skins, bear pelts — and you can still read that history in the names: Huidenstraat, Reestraat, Berenstraat. These nine short side streets cut between the Prinsengracht, Keizersgracht, Herengracht and Singel, their 18th-century canal-house facades largely intact, their ground floors now given over to independent booksellers, vintage clothing dealers, ceramicists and small-batch perfumers.
The area covers a compact grid — nine streets, four canals, the whole thing walkable in an afternoon — and sits within the Grachtengordel, Amsterdam's UNESCO-listed canal ring. The Anne Frank House and the Westerkerk are a two-minute walk north along the Prinsengracht.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who come back tend to arrive on a weekday morning, before the bridges fill up. They note that Sunday hours don't start until noon, and that the streets run east–west, so crossing all four canals means crossing all nine. Taking them in order — Gasthuismolensteeg to Wijde Heisteeg — keeps you from doubling back.
Deals in Jordaan Nine Streets Shopping Area
Book directly at the providerHow Jordaan Nine Streets Shopping Area came to be
The land the Nine Streets occupy was reclaimed during Amsterdam's third great expansion, begun around 1612 during the Twelve Years' Truce. The Grachtengordel was dug, the Jordaan laid out, and the cross-streets in between were given over to trades that needed water access and space to work — the leather tanners whose business gave Huidenstraat, Reestraat and Berenstraat their names. Most of what stands today dates from the 18th century; little of the original 17th-century fabric survived.
For most of the 20th century the area had no collective identity. That changed in the 1990s, when a handful of local shopkeepers including Djoeke Wessing pushed to give the streets a shared name and a shared purpose. The Association of the 9 Streets was founded on 12 November 1996, and by 1997 Negen Straatjes had been recognised as an official Amsterdam district — a piece of civic branding that turned a quiet backwater into one of the city's more coherent shopping neighbourhoods.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
Plan your visit
On the map
When to go
Amsterdam runs cool and damp most of the year, with persistent wind from November through March that makes the canal crossings feel colder than the thermometer suggests. Mid-May to mid-September is the most agreeable window — temperatures reach the low-to-mid 20s Celsius at the height of summer — though rain is possible in any season, and autumn afternoons can turn grey quickly.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.