Waterlooplein Market

Waterlooplein itself was created in the 1880s by filling in two former canals, Leprozengracht and Houtgracht, and quickly became home to a Jewish market that grew into the largest and most important in Amsterdam by the early 20th century — a defining feature of the neighbourhood's identity until the Nazi occupation and persecution of Amsterdam's Jewish population brought it to an abrupt end in 1941.

After the war, the market gradually revived as a general bazaar, and by the 1960s and 70s had reinvented itself again as a hub for youth and counterculture, selling secondhand clothes, records and curiosities to a generation exploring alternative fashion and music — a role it has broadly retained ever since. Today it's the oldest continuously operating flea market in the Netherlands, with around 300 stalls dealing in vintage clothing, antiques, vinyl records, secondhand cameras, and a fair amount of outright junk mixed in with genuine finds.