A history of the Amsterdam night

The Amsterdam night was not built by the city. It was taken, again and again.

One thread runs through sixty years of the Amsterdam night. Again and again, a group with nowhere else to go takes a building nobody wants any more, a church, a factory, a printing plant, a basement, a school, and turns it into room to gather. The authorities tolerate it, later formalise it, and what began as an occupation becomes an institution. From the first gay dance nights^[1] to Paradiso and De School, this has happened over and over.

And it began before the dancefloor. As early as 1946, Amsterdammers founded the club that would become the COC, with dances and club nights for people who could have them nowhere else, two decades before Paradiso.^[2] In 1965 the Provo movement gave the city its first postwar counterculture in the street.^[3] Out of the same urge, making room where there was none, grew every free space: the gay dancefloor in an Odeon basement, the squats that became clubs, the Sunday night that belonged to no one.

Sixty years, in brief

1. 1946

   COC founded

   On 7 December 1946 the Shakespeareclub is founded in Amsterdam, renamed COC in 1949. From the start it is also a social space: dances, drinks, club nights for people who could not have them elsewhere. The oldest surviving LGBTQ+ organisation in the world.^[2]

2. 1952

   DOK

   COC opens DOK (De Odeon Kelder) in the basement of the Odeon building at Singel 460. Privatised soon after, but for decades the first and largest gay dance venue in post-war Europe. Closes 14 March 1989.^[4]

3. 1965

   Provo

   The Provo movement puts Amsterdam on edge with happenings and playful protest, laying the groundwork for the counterculture the night venues grow out of.^[3]

4. 1968

   Paradiso opens

   In a former church building from 1880, squatted by hippies the year before, Paradiso opens as a 'cosmic recreation centre'. It becomes one of the first places where soft drugs are tolerated.^[5]

5. 1970

   Melkweg

   A group of young people open the Melkweg, in a former sugar and milk factory, as a cultural centre. Summers only at first, then permanent from 1973.^[6]

6. 1980

   Squatting & Mazzo

   The squatters' movement is at its peak; at Beatrix's coronation the cry is 'no housing, no coronation'. Around the same time Club Mazzo opens on the Rozengracht, switching to house music in 1989.^[7][8]

7. 1985

   De Trut

   In the squatted Tetterode complex on Bilderdijkstraat, De Trut starts: a non-commercial queer party on Sunday nights, run by volunteers, cash bar, everything left over going to the Trutfonds for LGBTQIA+ projects. Still runs today.^[9]

8. 1987

   RoXY & acid house

   RoXY opens on the Singel and becomes the epicentre of acid house, which breaks through nationally in 1988.^[10]

9. 1989

   The iT

   Manfred Langer opens the iT on the Amstelstraat, a beacon of exuberant, mixed gay nightlife, until it closes in 2004.^[11]

10. 1992

    Gabber & Thunderdome

    Gabber blows over from Rotterdam; Amsterdam develops its own, more experimental variant around Mokum Records. The word 'gabber' comes from Amsterdam street slang for 'mate'.^[12]

11. 1996

    Canal Parade

    Pride Amsterdam is founded and holds the first Canal Parade on the canals on 3 August 1996, with about forty-five boats. On the Dutch Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2019.^[13]

12. 2009

    Trouw & the first 24-hour licence

    In a former newspaper printing plant on the Wibautstraat, TrouwAmsterdam opens as the first club with a 24-hour licence. It closes in early 2015.^[14]

13. 2016

    De School

    The same team opens De School in a former technical high school. After eight years that place also closes, in January 2024, as its permits run out.^[15]

Why this matters

Every closure on this timeline was once a victory. The lesson is not nostalgia but attention: the night only survives if new space keeps opening, space where anyone can be themselves. That is what the night was always at its best, and it is exactly where the strain is now.

Images, flyers and stories from this period are kept and shown by, among others, the Amsterdam City Archives, in the exhibition 'Wie Danst Is Vrij' on Amsterdam club culture since 1980.^[16]