The Jordaan

The Jordaan has always sat sideways to the rest of Amsterdam. Laid out in the early 1600s on ditches that cut through the polder, its streets ignore the neat logic of the canal belt next door. It was poor and it was proud, and everyone from factory workers to drop makers, shrimp peelers to tech millionaires has called it home. A village inside a city, where the street is your garden and the café is your living room — and where complaining about the neighbourhood is a local sport, played out of love.

These photographs are part of a project by Red Bull and Fanclub Centrum: forty of the neighbourhood's cafés, restaurants and shops telling their stories in their own words, gathered in the book Jordaan, 2026.