Living in Czaar Peterbuurt, Amsterdam

Amsterdam's Centrum is not all canal houses. The Czaar Peterbuurt sits at its eastern end, on ground that belonged to the Dutch East India Company, where the rope-yards and shipyards stood before the housing did. It is small, plain and easy to miss, and its whole character comes from one street running through the middle of it. If you like the idea of living in Centrum without living in the postcard, this is one of the few places where that is still an ordinary proposition.

What it is

The buurt lies in stadsdeel Centrum, in the wijk Oostelijke Eilanden, and it is neatly boxed in: the Oostenburgergracht and the Cruquiuskade close it to the south, the railway line towards Muiderpoort runs along the north. Houses went up here in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, on former VOC ground, and they were built for workers: narrow streets, small and shallow dwellings, some of them the tiny cottages Amsterdammers call dubbeltjespanden, and almost no public green anywhere inside the buurt. The Czaar Peterstraat, which got its name in 1878 and honours Tsar Peter the Great, is the axis that everything hangs off. From 2003 an urban renewal plan replaced a good deal of run-down social housing with larger flats to rent and to buy, and the street filled with small shops and studios, which is why the buurt reads today as neither poor nor polished.

Who lives here

Barely two thousand people, which makes this one of the smallest residential pockets in Centrum. The mix is the classic Amsterdam layering: households who have been here since it was a working-class buurt, the owner-occupiers who arrived with the renewal, and a younger renting layer of people who work in the centre and want to keep the commute to a walk. Flats are mostly small, so the shared-flat and single-room market is real but limited, and turnover is slow. Anyone renting a room that is not self-contained should know that the rent is capped by the national points system regardless of landlord or postcode, which matters more here than in the free-market blocks nearby.

What it's like during the day

Ordinary and low-key. The Czaar Peterstraat carries the daytime life: coffee, bread, a handful of design and food businesses, people running errands on foot. The side streets are residential and narrow, with bikes chained along the facades and not much traffic, because they lead nowhere in particular. The lack of green is real: for a park you cross into the Funenpark next door, walk to the Entrepotdok and the Plantage to the west, or ride ten minutes south to the Oosterpark. The water compensates a little, since the Nieuwe Vaart runs along the buurt and gives it a view rather than a garden.

What it's like in the evening

Quiet, small-scale and local. A few cafes and restaurants on the Czaar Peterstraat stay open in the evening; beyond that there is nothing that could be called nightlife, and the buurt goes to sleep early. Everything louder is a short ride away: the Nieuwmarkt and the eastern edge of the old centre in one direction, the bars along the Zeeburgerdijk and the Oosterpark side of Oost in the other. On a summer evening the quayside along the Nieuwe Vaart does more work than any bar.

Getting around

Tram 1 runs through the buurt and stops on the Czaar Peterstraat itself, which is unusual for somewhere this small: it comes from Osdorp de Aker in the far west of the city and ends at Azartplein on the KNSM and Java islands, so it links you westward across town and eastward into the Oostelijk Havengebied without changing. Bus 42 connects to Centraal. Amsterdam Muiderpoort, a full railway station and the terminus of tram 19, is about a kilometre away, five or six minutes by bike. On the bike Centraal is around eleven to fourteen minutes and the Dam a couple more, and both are walkable if you are not in a hurry. There is no metro station within walking distance, which is the one gap in an otherwise very well-connected corner.

Eating and shopping

Almost all of it is on the Czaar Peterstraat: bakers, a butcher, small grocers, coffee places, and enough restaurants for a weeknight but not for choice. For a proper supermarket run and for anything else, people go to the Oostelijke Eilanden side, to the Dappermarkt in Oost, which is about ten minutes by bike, or across to Waterlooplein. The compensation is that a street market and a full shopping street are both close enough that you never plan around them.

When NOT to pick it

If you need green space at your door, choice in the shops or any nightlife at all, this is a bad fit: the buurt is dense, hard-surfaced and tiny, the flats are often small and shallow, and one street carries the entire local economy. It is the wrong choice if you want a big rental market to pick from or a lively evening within walking distance, and the Indische Buurt or the Oosterpark side of Oost would give you more of both for less money. It is the right choice if you want to live inside Centrum on ordinary streets rather than tourist ones, with a tram at the door, a railway station five minutes away by bike and the old centre reachable on foot, and if you would rather have quiet and a canal view than a park and a bar.