The Damrak is situated between Centraal Station and Dam Square. It is the main street where people are arriving to enter the centre of Amsterdam, for example by taking the tram lines 4, 9, 16, 24 and 25.

The Damrak was once the place where the Amstel entered the IJ, a large saltwater bay, serving as the first harbor of Amsterdam. In the 19th century, a section of it was filled.

The etymology of Damrak is thought to have come from the contraction d’ammerak, literally "on the side of the ammerak. Aemerik is old Frisian for "a place suitable for inhabitation".

Walking North from the Dam along the Damrak, you get a close-up look at what has become a tacky, down-market – but nonetheless lively – street, awash with souvenir shops, amusement arcades, exchange bureaus, smoky cafés and cheap fast-food restaurants, and with fleets of canal tour boats moored in what’s left of a waterway that once reached to the Dam.

This humdrum modern cityscape is interrupted by the presence of the monumental Beurs van Berlage, formerly the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. Immediately catching the eye this remarkable Dutch modernist building is now a cultural centre. One of the few large building projects undertaken in the last half of the 19th century, it was constructed between 1896 and 1903 from the designs of one of Holland’s most famous architect, Hendrick Petrus Berlage.

For many years the Beurs was considered the most important Dutch architectural fin de siecle monument. The stockbrokers have since moved away and these days the building is administered by a foundation, which puts on exhibitions on a variety of themes, concerts, cultural events, conferences and dinners.

Since 1988, the Beurs van Berlage has functioned as the permanent home of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra (the “Ned=Pho”) and the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, and has one large concert hall and one small hall made of glass.

Within its cavernous and echoing interior it is an impressive mix of pastel-colored decorative brickwork, wooden flooring, stone pillars, narrow arcades, Romanesque and neo-Renaissance motifs, and steel roof girders from which hang long pendular globe-shaped lights. Around the periphery of the hall, small wooden cubicles, where deals were made and fortunes won, are a reminder of the building’s original function as an exchange.