Red Light District

There’s something oddly compelling about the throbbing red light district, where scantily-clad and often utterly bored women beckon from their windows to the passers-by.

It draws in visitors, regardless of moral rectitude or erotica-induced need for smelling salts. It is, in fact, more of a brand name than a call to louche arms. These days everyone knows about Amsterdam and its sex industry.

But you needn’t worry about your hormones staging a coup d’etat on your brain - for all its subject matter and worldly denizens it’s an oddly unerotic place, albeit an extremely fascinating one.

The district’s foundations were laid by the glories of the Dutch empire, reliant on soldiers and their testosterone. When ships came in, the port would get an injection of sea-weary sailors with gold to splash about, and the area - known as the Walletjes - was where women who were willing to soak it up were to be found.

These days, crowds clog the alleyways, peep-shows and alleyways while buxom but mostly-bored sex workers beckon from pink-lit windows. There are 450 of these windows and a street specialising in every taste - Latinos on Oudezijds Achterburgwal and Molsteeg, Asians on Stofstraat, and the ‘high-end’ glamour pusses along tiny Trompettersteeg by the Oude Kerk.