What Daily Life Was Like in Rembrandt's Amsterdam (1660) | History for Sleep

Tonight, spend one ordinary week in Amsterdam in the year sixteen hundred and sixty, at the height of the Dutch Golden Age. This is an invented story, but the world it moves through is real. A merchant's house on a canal. Monday's scrubbing and the box bed in the wall. Tuesday's market on the Dam. Wednesday at the Exchange, where the whole world was bought and sold in an hour. Thursday, when the fleet comes in from the East. Friday's French lesson, the virginal, and a letter from Haarlem. Friday evening, when the canal begins to freeze. Saturday in the warm kitchen, with peat smoke and hutspot and grandmother's stories. Sunday, with the carillons ringing out over the rooftops and the whole city out on the ice. And then a last night at the window, above a frozen canal, listening to the watchman call the hour. Dim the lights, settle in, and let the century drift by. Every image in this video is a real, public-domain painting: Amsterdam cityscapes by Gerrit and Job Berckheyde, interiors by Pieter de Hooch, church interiors and markets by Emanuel de Witte, Vermeer's Milkmaid, harbours by Ludolf Bakhuizen and Abraham Storck, still lifes by Willem Kalf and Pieter Claesz, letters and music by Gabriël Metsu, and winter scenes by Hendrick Avercamp and the Beerstraaten family. Credits appear on screen. Chapters 00:00 Settling in 00:33 Chapter One — Monday: The House on the Canal 09:15 Chapter Two — Tuesday: The Market on the Dam 16:05 Chapter Three — Wednesday: The Exchange 22:30 Chapter Four — Thursday: Ships from the East 28:25 Chapter Five — Friday: Lessons and Letters 33:12 Chapter Six — Friday Evening: The First Ice 39:01 Chapter Seven — Saturday: The Warm Kitchen 44:54 Chapter Eight — Sunday: Bells over the City 51:04 Chapter Nine — Night on the Canal 57:19 Sleep well Sources and further reading Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (1987) Maarten Prak, The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century (2005) Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall 1477-1806 (1995) Paul Zumthor, Daily Life in Rembrandt's Holland (1962) Mariët Westermann, A Worldly Art: The Dutch Republic 1585-1718 (1996) Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City (2013) Lodewijk Petram, The World's First Stock Exchange (2011) Images: public domain works via Wikimedia Commons (including the Rijksmuseum, Mauritshuis, Amsterdam Museum, Nationalmuseum Stockholm, the National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Music: original ambient composition. About The Painted Hours: slow, carefully researched history for quiet nights. The narration is performed with a synthetic voice; the script, research and art selection are our own. #history #sleep #amsterdam