Canalside living Amsterdam
Breakfast is best when you take your time
The Brouwersgracht in Amsterdam’s Jordaan district takes its name from the breweries that once lined its banks, but while noise and activity has long since disappeared from the broad, tree-lined canal, the stately houses and warehouses of the brewers remain. Considered by locals to be one of the most beautiful canals in the city, it is here, benefiting from the light that comes flooding in across the open canal, that the Salvatori apartment is situated.
Breakfast is best when you take your time and, sat at Piero Lissoni’s Design for Soul table, the calm morning light picks out the golden seams that traces cracks in the stone surface. Made from a reclaimed piece of marble and repaired using the Japanese kintsugi technique, the table is a sustainable as well as graceful piece of design, and centres a restrained, linear room: the Stone Parquet floor and sandblasted walls, both in Crema d’Orcia; the Ellipse kitchen accessories by John Pawson, set against a wall in the B-Fish texture. Elisa Ossino’s Theca cabinet completes the space, displaying tableware against a panel of sandblasted stone that matches the wall.
At the top of the house, nestled in the neck gables that are distinctive of Amsterdam canal houses, a study offers views out over the water and the buildings opposite. With the wall around the generous window lined with CNC in Crema d’Orcia, it is a peaceful space to read and write – especially with the elegant marble-backed tray and pen pot that form part of Ossino’s Fontane Bianche collection.
From there it’s time for a quick stop at the Huis Marseille, an intimate photography museum located in a house built in 1665, with a carefully maintained garden hidden behind, before going on to the Rijksmuseum to check out the latest exhibition, or just to take in the recent renovation by architects Antonio Cruz and Antonio Ortiz. While there, there’s no excuse not to have dinner at the Michelin-starred RIJKS restaurant for a taste of modern Dutch cuisine.
Then, after a quick beer at the café Papeneiland, which has stood on the corner of Brouwersgracht and Prinsengracht since 1642, it’s back home. The spacious minimal surroundings of the bathroom are the perfect place to wind down – the softly undulating wall in Crema d’Orcia a calming background for Adda freestanding basins in walnut – before being lulled to sleep by the sound of the water gently lapping at the houseboats moored outside.
