Why is the symbol of Amsterdam three crosses? Coat of arms and flag of Amsterdam: description and meaning. Connection with the Apostle Andrew


So, all good things come to an end, and this week I will finally finish with stories about Holland and Amsterdam. Despite the obvious climatic disadvantages, in general the Netherlands is an extremely comfortable, convenient, sweet and kind country. If it weren’t for the cold and rain that plague stays in the Netherlands at almost any time of the year, the country would undoubtedly be among the leaders in tourism and resort tourism. Or maybe it wouldn’t have been, because the cold and unpleasant climate contributed to everything that made the Dutch so hardworking and persistent in their desire to improve their homeland, and the country itself turned into a paradise of the North, created by human hands.
Oddly enough, some exception is the city where, due to a misunderstanding, due to the promotion of the brand, the bulk of tourists go - Amsterdam. To some, these endless crowds, making Amsterdam the most crowded city in Europe, seem like the height of action, but the crowds, coupled with garbage and dirt (Amsterdam is surprisingly dirty in the center, unlike all other Dutch cities), sometimes causes disgust. The myth about Amsterdam as the city of sins, which has become established among foreigners, contributes to this state of the city, and as proof they will cite its coat of arms - three crosses - as a symbol of the capital of the sex industry.

1. In fact, this is nonsense, because the coat of arms of the city “Three Crosses” was chosen back in 1505, when there was no talk of any sex industry, and the Protestant revolution loomed ahead, which made Amsterdam for a time the most conservative and intolerant city in Europe. There are two versions of the symbolism of the three crosses. According to one, three crosses signify “valor, firmness and mercy”; according to the other, they denoted the dangers with which the city struggled for several centuries - “floods, fires and plague” - and were hung everywhere when another disaster began in the city.


2. It was only later in the 20th century that three crosses became a symbol of the porn industry and sex entertainment, and souvenir manufacturers took possession of this symbol, giving it an ambiguous meaning. Although by and large. If it were not for the ubiquitous coffee shops that Amsterdam is filled with (also a purely tourist feature), Amsterdam can hardly be called such a capital of debauchery. This is a clear exaggeration.


3. However, the myths around Amsterdam, intensely inflated by the tourism industry, are now so rooted in the consciousness of all of Europe and not only it, but also the rich countries of Asia (Japanese and Chinese tourists here is the second largest category of visitors after Europeans), that Amsterdam is now literally bursting with the invasion of crowds of foreigners.


4. Therefore, is it worth going to Amsterdam? It’s possible to work, but as tourists, well, I don’t know. I could visit for a few hours (after all, you should visit it at least once in your life), but don’t stay here for a long time.


5. Some travelers recommend the suburbs or outlying areas of Amsterdam for living, which are indeed full of examples modern architecture and differ from the center for the better. But I’m not sure whether it’s worth trudging across the entire city to the center every day - this pleasure quickly gets boring.


6. The best option for relaxation, these are, after all, the ancient cities of the Netherlands.


7. Transport here is so well developed and thought out that getting from any city to any other point is not difficult. The Dutch understood this a long time ago. Their railway system is one of the best in Europe.


8. Almost everyone old City The Netherlands is the same Amsterdam, unspoilt by tourists and capital status.


9. Therefore, the symbol of the city became Central station- one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful building cities. Built in 1889, it became a symbol of the triumph of the industrial age and the power of the human mind.


10. It is surrounded on almost all sides by the Amstel River and its canals, but dominates them like a mighty steel giant. At the top of the station towers are weather vanes and gold-plated clocks, indicating the strength and direction of the wind, vital to shipping, which then and now still forms a large part of the business industry in Amsterdam.

Great coat of arms of Amsterdam
Versions

Small coat of arms of Amsterdam
Details
Crown Austrian Imperial Crown
Shield holders Lions holding a shield and crown on both sides
Motto Heldhaftig, Vastberaden, Barmhartig
Media files on Wikimedia Commons

Elements

First element

In the very center of the composition and presented in the form of a heraldic shield. The shield is red, in the middle of which there is a wide black stripe running vertically, on which there are three white oblique crosses. There are two versions about these crosses, the first version says that these symbols represent the crosses of St. Andrew the First-Called, and according to the second version, these symbols characterize the danger that may threaten the city, namely: water element- flood, fiery element - fire and plague, bringing pestilence.

Second element

Austrian imperial crown, which changed its appearance several times. The first crown was included in the design of the coat of arms in 1489, when the king of Germany, Maximilian I, for services rendered, the city was awarded the right to decorate its coat of arms with the symbols of the royal crown. In 1508, the crown was replaced with the imperial crown of Maximilian, who was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. At the beginning of the 17th century, Maximilian's crown was replaced by that of Emperor Rudolf II, which became the Austrian Imperial Crown.

Third element

Lions holding a shield and a crown on both sides, they appeared on the coat of arms at the end of the 16th century, during this period Amsterdam and the province were united into a single Republic of the Netherlands, which included seven more provinces.

Like most cities in the world, Amsterdam has its own official city flag, and it looks quite simple. The flag is simple but popular, as you can see its elements (the "XXX" symbols) all over the city. Excursions in Amsterdam include a story about the symbols of the city, but it is not always possible to get reliable information from the guide about what exactly these three X’s mean.

Amsterdam coat of arms

The flag of Amsterdam is based on the city coat of arms. This, in turn, is represented by a red shield with a black stripe and three silver St. Andrew's crosses with the motto of Amsterdam below (Heldhaftig, Vastberaden, Barmhartig, which means "Valiant, Steadfast, Compassionate"). Two golden lions flank the coat of arms, and an imperial crown adorns the top of the shield.

The origin of the coat of arms of Amsterdam is unknown. But there are some theories.

What "XXX" Doesn't Exactly Mean

There are several popular theories about the origin of the XXX symbol. According to historians (and some common sense), the following theories are incorrect:

    XXX: fire, floods and the Black Death.

    This theory is that the three crosses on the Amsterdam flag represent the three dangers of Old Amsterdam: fire, floods and the Black Death (plague) or that they were meant to ward off these dangers. However, this popular legend has no historical basis. Noble families from the suburbs of Amsterdam used St. Andrew's crosses long before the plague struck Europe.

    Amsterdam with an X.

    Besides the canals and coffee shops, Amsterdam is also known for its adult entertainment, such as the Red Light District (De Wallen). However, it is a complete coincidence that the crosses on the Amsterdam flag are similar to modern shorthand for anything with the definition of XXX.

The most likely theories for the appearance of “XXX” on the coat of arms and flag of Amsterdam

So, now that we know what the three X's don't stand for, let's take a look at the most likely theories from Amsterdam historians about the city's connection to the "XXX" symbol.

    Connection with the Apostle Andrew.

    The three crosses on the coat of arms of Amsterdam are St. Andrew's crosses. They appear horizontally on the flag, but they are also depicted vertically on seals and walls. Saint Andrew was a fisherman and an apostle who, according to the Holy Scriptures, suffered martyrdom on a cross called the oblique cross. The XXX symbol of Amsterdam can be dated back to 1505. Then it was a city of fishermen, and this flag was flown on all the ships of Amsterdam.

    Connection with the Persian dynasty.

    Most historians believe that the coat of arms of Amsterdam and its crosses may be associated with the aristocratic Persian family, which once owned big amount land in and around Amsterdam. Knight Jan Persijn was Lord of Amsterdam from 1280 to 1282. St. Andrew's crosses were depicted on his family's shield. The Persien family also owned two other villages near Amsterdam: Ouder-Amstel and Nieuwer-Amstel (now known as the suburb of Amstelveen). The flags of these two cities also feature St. Andrew's crosses.

Amsterdam city flag: the coolest flag in the world?

The X's on the flag may not represent adult entertainment, but they have made the Amsterdam flag famous throughout the world. Some flag lovers consider it the coolest city flag in the world. A flag as a background can be great

Many people know that the symbol of Amsterdam is three crosses. Those who read about it on Wikipedia know that these are the crosses of St. Andrew and that they mean valor, firmness and mercy (or, in another interpretation, water, fire and epidemic). And only those who pay attention know that these crosses are effectively used in many logos.

Three crosses, unchanged, are constantly found on lampposts and small posts along the roads.

They are also found on urns and, in a decoratively reinterpreted form, in elements of urban structures (in this photograph a pillar is made of crosses). We won’t even look towards the souvenir shops :-)

The logo is present at public transport stops and on station clocks. He's everywhere.

Perhaps someone is waiting from xxx meaning sex, but this just doesn’t happen often.

And then the fun begins. Let's look at this urn. Here are three vertically aligned crosses. And below it is some kind of triangle. This triangle is a sector roughly showing the area of ​​the city. From the center to the southwest.

And here is the logo on the door of a municipal service car central region. Letter C.

The eyes finally widen from the summary picture on the website iamsterdam.com.

Other services are also involved in the development of the logo. For example, healthcare.

Commercial enterprises are also not lagging behind: they use their activities in the logo with pleasure and imagination.


We arrived in Amsterdam from Cologne. The road did not tire us, we got there by high speed train ICE, the journey is only 2 hours 40 minutes. Coming out of the station building, we disappeared into the crowd of the same tourists who had come here for new impressions and emotions.
Our acquaintance with the city began with a bus tour; it lasted about 2.5 hours and also included a visit to a diamond processing factory. Those wishing to buy the products could choose them in the showroom right there, and upon purchase they were given a certificate of quality of the stones. We transferred from the bus to a boat and set off along the city canals.

The railway station building was built in 1889 on artificial island Hey Bay, which was created specifically for this purpose by the Dutch architect Kuipers and is considered the gateway of the capital. The center of the station facade is decorated with images of the coats of arms of Amsterdam and 14 cities.

Damrak Street, a former canal filled in between 1845 and 1883, runs between the Central train station and Dam Square, from north to south. The main street that takes people from the train station to the center of Amsterdam.


Damrak street. It contains cultural centers, many cafes, craft workshops and museums.


visible in the distance old church- Oude Kerk is the oldest parish church in Amsterdam, founded in 1306 by the Bishop of Utrecht. The church is located in the DeWallen area, which is now a red light district; Rembrandt often visited this church, where he baptized his children. This is the only building in Amsterdam that has been preserved in the same form as it looked at the time when Rembrandt entered it.


The old church is also visible in this photo. Back in 1306, fishermen built a small wooden church on this site dedicated to St. Nicholas - the patron saint of children, sailors, merchants, thieves and the city of Amsterdam. Over the next three hundred years, this church was endlessly built both in breadth and height, and the result was not just a temple, but the whole city, consisting of ten chapels, a bell tower and a baptistery. The Oude Kerk never burned, although the neighborhood survived three terrible fires. On the bell tower, which, like many other towers in the city, was built on by Hendrik de Keyser in 1565, hangs the oldest bell in Amsterdam, cast in 1450. At the end of the week, on Saturdays, at four in the afternoon, the melodious chime of the carillon (a set of small bells), which was made especially for the Oude Kerk tower by the famous music master François Hemony, sounds. The Gothic octagonal bell tower of the church served as a landmark for sailors sailing to the shores of Amsterdam. On Sundays, services of the Dutch Reformed Church are held here. And on the red bus we went on a city tour. Behind the bus you can see the stock exchange building (built 1897-1903) by the architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage, included by UNESCO in the Dutch list of world heritage sites.


"Dancing" houses on Damrak Street.

Due to the fact that at one time Amsterdam residents were taxed only for the area of ​​land on which they built their houses, the townspeople tried to make the first floor narrower during construction, and systematically expanded the usable area upward, so many buildings overhang the sidewalks. The houses are so narrow that furniture cannot fit through the doors. Because of this, many buildings have a hook built into the roof, a rope is hooked onto it, and thus large objects are lifted into the apartment through the window. As a rule, three windows on the floor are actually inclined towards the street: this is done so that it is convenient to drag furniture and all sorts of supplies on ropes.


This is where we bought tickets for bus tour. I didn’t see any vodka museum inside; they sell all sorts of consumer goods and have a mini cafe.





The Blue Bridge is a historic bridge over the Amstel River, connecting Rembrandt Square with Waterloo Square. The bridge got its name from the wooden Blue Bridge, painted in one of the colors of the national Dutch flag, which has been on this site since approximately 1600. The name was retained after 1883, when the stone spans of the new bridge were erected.

The stone bridge has three passages for ships and is richly decorated. The columns along the bridge and the lantern supports are topped with the crown of the Austrian Empire. Architects Bastian de Graef and Willem Springer. The bridge carries car and tram traffic.


One of the most picturesque canals in Amsterdam, the Reguliersgracht, also called the Canal of Seven Bridges, was dug in 1664.


Bridge over the Nieuwe Herengracht canal.


In 1658, the “three canal plan” was implemented. After this, the city changed greatly. Along the Grand Canals, boulevards, houses and offices of wealthy citizens were built according to strict rules. Even the color of the front door was regulated - green. The width of the buildings was set to no more than 8 m. To build a large house, it was necessary to buy several plots. Middle-class citizens and artisans settled on the side streets. Houses were built on stilts, which were driven into swampy, loose soil. The length of the piles reached 13-18 m.


The Bag Museum, located in Amsterdam, is dedicated to historical bags, handbags and suitcases. The museum's collection includes 3,500 exhibits, the oldest of which date back to the beginning of the 16th century. It is one of only three such museums in the world and has the largest collection in the world. At first, the museum existed in two halls of a villa in Amstelveen; since June 2007, the museum has been located in a 17th-century building overlooking the Herengracht, the most prestigious canal in Amsterdam.








Montelbaanstoren tower on the Oudeschans canal.


The Montelbaanstoren Tower on the Oudeschans Canal was built in 1512 as a fortress tower. In the 16th century, the appearance of a clock tower in the city quickly convinced that the clock was there to protect the city. During the Middle Ages, it served as a defensive point. The townspeople were delighted that the tower never walked correctly, for this they gave the tower a nickname - “stupid Jacob”.
Sint Nikolaaskerk, or St. Nicholas Church, is a Roman Catholic church in the center of Amsterdam. Officially, the church was called “The Church of St. Nicholas within the Walls,” referring to the city’s oldest defensive fortifications. The architect Blais (1842-1912) designed the church based on a combination of several revived styles, among which, first of all, neo-baroque and neo-renaissance can be distinguished.



Church of St. Nicholas.








There are many "houseboats" on the canals in Amsterdam. These are “Weekend Homes”, that is, houses to which their owners come for weekends or holidays, and not only from Holland.


The excursion along the canals of Amsterdam ended at the pier with this sculpture.


Now left to their own devices, the exploration of the city continues.
Damrak Street begins directly from Station Square. Its left side is a section of the Amstel River with berths for excursion trams (once boats loaded with grain, fish and whale oil, all this was put up for auction on the Amsterdam stock exchange) and picturesque houses of the 17th-18th centuries that drop directly into the water (these are the back facades of restaurants, clubs and bars). The right one is a continuous row of tourist shops, restaurants, snack bars and currency exchange offices, shops, and between them are narrow medieval alleys.



On the streets of Amsterdam, cyclists behave like kings, cars give way to them, they can run red lights and do not pay much attention to pedestrians. The fact is that there are paths for bicycles between the sidewalk and the roadway. Tourists who don’t know this often climb onto these paths and get kicked in the butt.




We go further along Damrak Street and find ourselves on Dam, the main and most old square city ​​(the name "Damrak" just means "passage to the Dam"). Back in the 14th century there was no real square here, there was just a small empty space known as De Plaets, where they sold freshly caught fish. Later, a small village arose on this site and the first dam on the Amstel was built, which was strengthened and became wide enough for the emergence of the Dam city square, which was formed from two squares - Middeldam and Platse.
Dam Square.


The main building on Dam Square - the former Amsterdam City Hall, now the Royal Palace (Koninklijk Paleis) - was built by Jacob van Kampen in the mid-17th century - the official residence of Queen Beatrix, who permanently lives in The Hague, but when she comes to Amsterdam, she stays here. For lodging, the royal family always paid a symbolic fee to the Amsterdam treasury - in old money, one guilder per year, that is, €0.45. This is one of four palaces in the Netherlands, which Queen Beatrix disposes of by Decree of Parliament.


The palace is decorated with a large dome, on top of which there is a weather vane in the shape of an ancient cogg vessel. Cogg is a symbol of Amsterdam. From the balcony of the Royal Palace in 1980 former queen Juliana introduced the people of the Netherlands to a new queen - Beatrix. Prince Willem-Alexander kissed Princess Maxima on this balcony on their wedding day on February 2, 2002.


On Dam Square there is a famous historical monument - National Monument(Nationaal Monument) - a majestic white obelisk with allegorical sculptures, 22 meters high, designed by the modernist architect, member of the De Stijl group, Pieter Oud to perpetuate the memory of the Dutch victims of the Second World War. The opening took place in 1956.
Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Located in a huge building in the center of Amsterdam. The idea to create this museum in Amsterdam arose in 1997. It took three years to present to the audience on January 12, 2000 an exhibition of twenty figures that formed the basis of the museum. Now the exhibition includes more than forty figures and continues to constantly expand.


Madame Tussauds Wax Museum is located next to the Royal Palace. It owes its name to Marie Tussaud, who was born in Strasbourg in 1761. Her mother worked as a housekeeper for Dr. Phillip Curtis, a wax model maker. It was he who taught Maria the art of working with wax. In 1777, Marie Tussaud creates her first wax figure. After the death of Phillip Curtis in 1794, his collection passed to Tussauds. In 1802, Marie Tussaud moved to London, in 1835. her first permanent exhibition took place. Marie Tussaud died in 1850.


Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) is a 15th-century Calvinist church on Dam Square, next to the Royal Palace.

View of the Nieuwe Kerk church from the other side. From the rear facade Royal Palace in 1899, the building of the Main Post Office (also known as Hoofdpostkantoor) was erected. The author of the Main Post Office is government architect Cornelis Hendrik Peters. The Magna Plaza department store has been operating here since 1992.


Magna Plaza department store.

If, shortly after the Royal Palace, you turn from Nieuwesides Vorburgval into tiny Sint Luciensteeg, then through a large gate in the brick wall you can enter the territory of the Amsterdam historical museum(Amsterdams Historisch Museum). This museum complex located on site former monastery Saint Lucia (1414).

Rokin Street (from Rak-in - "inner passage"), following the bend of Amstel, leads from Dam to Muntplein - the square of the former city gate. About halfway through Rokin, where the equestrian statue of Queen Wilhelmina (1880-1962) stands, the Amstel River emerges from the ground again.


Equestrian statue of Princess Wilhelmina on Rokin Street.

 

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