Description of the attraction
The Amsterdam Beguinage is one of the oldest indoor courtyards in Amsterdam. Beguinage is a community-community of beguines, women who led a life close to a monastic life, but could at any time leave the community, get married, retain their property, etc. Beguinages appeared in Europe in the 12th century and became very common in the 13th century, especially in Belgium and the Netherlands. Now there are practically no runaway nuns left.
The Beguinage is the only closed courtyard that was formed in the Middle Ages. It is located inside Singel, the innermost of Amsterdam's ring canals. The courtyard of the Beguinage remained at the level of medieval streets - that is, about a meter lower than the rest of the city streets. The exact date of the founding of the Beguinage is unknown, it is believed that the first beguines appeared in Amsterdam in 1307. The documents mention that in 1346 in one of the houses the beguines already lived, and the closed courtyard was first mentioned in written sources in 1389. The houses that make up the Beguinage are tall residential buildings built in the typical "Amsterdam" style. There are 47 buildings in total, each of them is a separate house, different from the neighboring ones. The facades mostly date back to the 17th and 18th centuries, but the buildings themselves are much older. One of the two wooden houses in Amsterdam has also survived here.
A small church of the Virgin Mary appeared in the Beguinage in 1397, and after the fires of 1421 and 1452, it had to be rebuilt. During the Reformation, the Catholic Church was transferred to the British and has since been called the English Church. In 1665, its own church was built in the Beguinage. The city authorities gave permission to build on the condition that the outside of the church does not look like a church.
Nowadays, the Beguinage is no longer one in the literal sense, because the last beguine who lived here, Anthony's sister, died in 1974.
