Often these houses display their grandest facades to the Vecht, because the Amsterdam merchants originally traveled to these estates by boat.

Soon after these charts were published, however, three Amsterdam merchants began meeting in secret, plotting an expedition to Indonesia.

The Amsterdam merchants now had all of the information they needed, and they set about raising capital to fund the expedition.

The latter provision effectively forced Amsterdam merchants (and many foreign merchants) to open accounts with this bank.

In 1667, Milan was an Amsterdam merchant, concerned with financing Prince George of Denmark.

During the heyday of the tulip craze, Amsterdam merchants purchased land in the Haarlem-Heemstede area for summer homes.

When the Spanish took Portugal in 1580, the Amsterdam merchants decided to go into the import business themselves, and in 1595 sent their first fleet to Asia.

Amsterdam merchants were at the center of the lucrative East Indies trade, where a single voyage could yield profits of 400%.

The building itself, set behind the facades of typical Amsterdam merchants' houses, has an impressive 7 storeyed atrium with a Japanese 'garden terrace' and waterfall.

Once owned as a group by an 18th-century Amsterdam merchant, Joseph Deutz, the paintings were dispersed at his death.