Joost van den Vondel

Take a good look at that statue in front of you, because this is Joost van den Vondel, the man this entire park was named after. When the park opened in 1865, it was simply called "Nieuwe Park," which is about as imaginative as naming your dog "Dog." Luckily, two years later, the city decided to honour its greatest literary figure, and the Vondelpark was born. Vondel himself was born in Cologne in 1587 and grew up in Amsterdam, where his father ran a silk shop on Warmoesstraat that was mostly famous for selling stockings. Not exactly a glamorous start for someone who would go on to write some of the most celebrated poetry and plays in the Dutch language. 

But Vondel was relentlessly curious, taught himself an extraordinary amount, and eventually rubbed shoulders with the finest intellectuals of his time. His life was not without drama. In 1641, he converted to Roman Catholicism, which caused such a scandal that even his own mother disowned him. He outlived nearly all of his children and grandchildren, and died in 1679 at the remarkable age of 91. His self-written epitaph said it all with a wink: "Here lies Vondel without mourners, he died of the cold."