Amsterdam City Hall, Amsterdam — Visitor Guide & Things to Do Nearby

Amsterdam's City Hall is not what most people expect. For starters, it shares a building with the Dutch National Opera and Ballet, a combination so unusual that locals gave it a nickname: the Stopera (a mashup of "stadhuis" and "opera").

The idea of building a new city hall had been floating around since 1915, and discussions about a proper opera house had been going on just as long. In 1979, someone proposed combining the two into a single complex. The result was one of the most controversial building projects in Amsterdam's history. Protests raged throughout the early 1980s, with squatters and counterculture groups fiercely opposing what they saw as a wasteful prestige project.

Despite the opposition, the opera opened on September 23, 1986, and the city hall followed two years later. Designed by Austrian architect Wilhelm Holzbauer and Dutch architect Cees Dam, the complex sits on the Amstel River at Waterlooplein.

Love it or hate it, the Stopera has become a fixture of Amsterdam's cultural landscape. The National Opera and Ballet is one of the most important performing arts institutions in the Netherlands, while the city hall handles the everyday business of governing Amsterdam.

The building's location at Waterlooplein is historically significant too. This was the heart of Amsterdam's Jewish quarter before World War II, and the square's name carries echoes of both that history and the famous Battle of Waterloo.

If you're on a Questo quest through Amsterdam, the Stopera and its surroundings tell stories that stretch from the 17th century to the fierce cultural battles of the 1980s.