How Does Amsterdam Feel About Being Sin City?

By Staff Writer Lia Daskalopoulos

Amsterdam is a city heavily associated with sin, lust and pleasure. Due to its rather liberal laws and atmosphere, it is a top destination for tourists to, well let’s put it directly, consume narcotics, party and pay to have sex. It is considered “European Las Vegas” by some (looking at you, Irish and British tourists). As someone who spent three years living near De Wallen, more commonly known as the Red Light District, I’ve seen a lot of people come and treat the city center as an adult playground. 

It is said that prostitution is as old as humankind. Founded in 1385, the Amsterdam Red Light

District has since been notorious. From sailors waiting for their ships to depart from the Amsterdam trading port, to tourists visiting from all over the world, the area has been a popular destination for men seeking company for centuries. Most of the Red Light District is still clearly targeted towards a male audience. With ladies sitting behind the famous red windows waiting for their customers and buildings advertising peep shows alongside other sexual shenanigans, it is not really a place that is designed to appeal to women. Men roam the fully packed streets in awe, some pointing around and laughing, while others are too high to even register what is going on around them.

Some sex shops are embellished with pink and glitter all over, selling a variety of sex toys and lingerie, seemingly targeted towards women. I’ve seen countless young women walk into these shops, giggling. Places like these open a space for exploring female sexuality, something that has been systematically repressed in a myriad of cultures, including Ireland, and continues to be repressed in many regions of the world. The Red Light area also hosts the Prostitution Information Center, which offers information about sex work by local sex workers to tourists, students and journalists alike, aiming to provide safety and respect for sex workers, and spread information about their legal rights. Some women living and working in the area have created communities to take ownership of the neighborhood, stand up for sex workers and react boldly towards sexualization and sexual harassment prevalent in the area.

The current mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, has a relatively conservative take on Amsterdam’s sinful city center. Since she entered office in 2018, stricter rules have been enforced regarding the sale and consumption of cannabis, due to fears that large-scale cannabis sales to tourists contribute to money laundering and other organized crime. Although cannabis is illegal in the Netherlands, its sale and usage are tolerated within certain limits. Apart from closing coffee shops and banning public cannabis consumption in the old city center,

Mayor Halsema has also proposed to move the Red Light District from De Wallen to Europaboulevard in the Amsterdam Zuid business district. 

The New Red Light District, or “skyscraper brothel” as one could call it, would not only consist of hotel rooms, but also bars, restaurants and entertainment facilities. The relocation would supposedly make the city center more peaceful by centering sex work clients all into one building, with Mayor Halsema also claiming that the new building would make sex work safer for prostitutes. However, the proposal has been met with a lot of backlash from Red Light sex workers, as well as Amsterdam locals, leading to an uproar and a petition to abandon the plans. Sex workers are concerned about displacement and safety issues - the Red Light rooms have a security system in place for the workers, and many workers feel that the large crowds of the city center deter crimes against them. Although Mayor Halsema feels that the windows are humiliating to the workers, a sex worker told Time in a 2023 interview that she doesn’t feel that way. “We don’t mind, otherwise we wouldn’t be in the windows.”

The main reason for the proposal is to reduce the amount of drunk, reckless (British) tourists roaming the city center, disrespecting the locals. By the way, I’m not joking when I specifically point out the British. The government of Amsterdam launched a digital advertising campaign a couple of years ago called “Stay Away”, which aimed to discourage men between the ages of 18 and 35 from visiting Amsterdam from the UK. Unfortunately, the campaign was reported to be inefficient. “Looks more like a commercial to me”, an interviewee said in a 2023 BBC article in response to the campaign that highlights the risks of excessive alcohol and drug usage. 

De Wallen and its businesses remain controversial amongst locals. Some believe that the sex and drug related practices should be suppressed and relocated, citing mass tourism as the main reason. Others believe that this is simply the current state of the city center, and that locals should accept the nuisance that comes with tourists bringing a hefty income for local restaurants, bars, coffee shops and other businesses operating in the area. Personally, I got used to the hectic flow of De Wallen pretty quickly. Yes, you do witness unusual things on a daily basis. Yes, street dealers would sometimes try to sell me cocaine while I was on my way to the grocery store. I would politely reply with “no thank you”, and they would wish me a good day. However, after several years of witnessing chaos on a daily basis, I was honestly quite relieved to relocate to the quiet, tranquil city of Cork.