When I was studying Medieval history, I was editing for the small magazine from the university from the department of Medieval history. In that time I came across a new finding at the Nieuwezijds Kolk. During building works for a new shopping centre builders uncovered remains of what looked like a giant wall. In a moment of maybe premature enthusiasm, the city-appointed archeologist claimed this was the castle of the lords of Van Amstel.
That was around 1995, and my study was in full swing. We just learnt that in the Middle Ages there were no castles in Amsterdam, let alone one of the legendary Van Amstels. Wasn’t that whole family a figment of the imagination of Vondel, roughly 300 years later?
We had our magazine, and we wrote about the academic argument: to castle or not to castle, that was our question. It wouldn’t surprise you one bit to hear we chose the historians point of view. After all, if there was a castle in this area, wouldn’t we have read about it? There was no written proof of its existence, and we were studying to be historians. So whatever you are digging up from the clay, it cannot be a castle.
I’ve seen the part of the wall, and it is still impressive. It really does bear all the signs of the building technique of that time, including foundations made of wood and animal skins. It is certainly a castle, but who built it? To this date historians are not in agreement. There is some proof for the theory that it was built by Count Floris V, the Count of Holland and Zeeland. According to this theory, it was built to control those pesky Amsterdammers.
None of this was known to Vondel in 1637. He wrote a play about the troublesome years after the murder of Count Floris in 1295, when the Van Amstels had to fight for their survival against an uprising from the nearby countryside. It was a play written near the end of the Dutch Revolt, the war that formed the country in its fight against Spain. This is a recording of one of the last annual performances of it, in 1961. These yearly performances, sometimes rather involuntarily visited by schoolchildren, lasted until 1968.