This Was Amsterdam in 1898 - Photographed the Week It Made a Queen

Amsterdam in 1898 - the week a girl of eighteen took an oath and became queen, photographed street by street. Real archive photographs of the city, with every source named on screen. This is Sepia Cities: one city, one year, and the people who were standing in it. No film of Amsterdam survives from 1898, so this video is built entirely from period photographs - the largest set we have ever worked from - brought to life with slow camera moves. The core comes from the Rijksmuseum and the Stadsarchief Amsterdam, including the pictures Jacob Olie, the city's semi-official photographer, made of the inauguration week day by day. In 1898 roughly half a million people lived here - the 1899 census counted about 510,000 - crowded along the canals of a city that was pulling down its old defences and building a railway station and a national museum out over its harbour. That September, eighteen-year-old Wilhelmina walked into the Nieuwe Kerk on the Dam to be sworn in. She was not given the kind of ceremony the British hold: in the Netherlands the monarch is inaugurated by oath (the inhuldiging), and the crown, the sceptre and the orb rest on a table beside her - never once placed on her head. Nothing here is invented, and nothing is colored in by a machine; where a picture comes from another year, the screen tells you. One week in Amsterdam in 1898 - the canals, the crowds on the Dam, the diamond cutters, the packed courtyards of the Jordaan - which street would you step onto, knowing every face in the photograph is long gone? Tell me in the comments. I read them. CHAPTERS 0:00 One week in Amsterdam, 1898 1:00 You are a witness, not a tourist 1:57 Amsterdam, by the 1899 census 2:15 The city of canals and the sea 4:01 The city that reinvented itself 5:54 The girl who became queen 8:29 The oath that made a queen 8:47 The diamond capital of the world 10:10 The city underneath 11:49 What came after 13:07 What still stands 14:23 Then and now, by the numbers 14:53 Everyone here is gone FOOTAGE & PHOTOGRAPHS There is no surviving public-domain film of Amsterdam in 1898, so this video uses no archival motion picture at all - it is built entirely from period photographs, brought to life with slow camera moves. The photographs are public-domain and Creative Commons images: the core is released as Open Access under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) by the Rijksmuseum, alongside images from the Stadsarchief Amsterdam and Wikimedia Commons. Among them are the photographs Jacob Olie, the city's semi-official photographer, made of the inauguration week of September 1898, day by day. Nothing is colored in by a machine. Every archive image carries its year and source on screen. IMAGES USED UNDER CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION (CC BY) Mostly present-day comparison shots, plus one period street photograph (the weigh-house market, around 1895). CC BY requires crediting the photographer, so each is listed with author and license (full source links are on file); every one is on Wikimedia Commons under its title: "'Canal Ride' Amsterdam" by FaceMePLS, CC BY 2.0 "Amsterdam Jordaan Aerial" by acediscovery, CC BY 4.0 "Centraal Station Amsterdam" by FaceMePLS, CC BY 2.0 "Corona - Empty streets in Amsterdam - Dam met Paleis" by Hay Kranen, CC BY 4.0 "Flickr - …trialsanderrors - The new market and bourse, Amsterdam, North Holland, the Netherlands, ca. 1895" by …trialsanderrors, CC BY 2.0 "Swans in a canal, Oudezijds Voorburgwal, with Bridge 105" by Jorge Láscar, CC BY 2.0 SOURCES (all public domain / CC0 unless noted above): Wikimedia Commons - CC BY 2.0, CC BY 4.0, CC0, No restrictions, Public domain A full, itemized source list for every clip and photograph is kept on file. MUSIC Three solo-piano nocturnes by Frederic Chopin (d. 1849; compositions public domain), performed and recorded by Musopen and released under Creative Commons Zero (CC0 1.0) - both the composition and the recordings are public domain, no attribution required. Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9 No. 2 Nocturne in C minor, Op. 48 No. 1 Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Op. posth., B. 49 "Lento con gran espressione" Recordings: Musopen (musopen.org), CC0 1.0. Source: Internet Archive, "musopen-chopin-complete-works-flac". #amsterdam #history #thenandnow #1898 #vintage #documentary