The Golden UFO

Right here, just outside the park entrance, something is quietly stealing the show. Look up and slightly to the side, and you will spot it: a golden, disc-shaped structure that looks like it crash-landed here and simply decided to stay. Locals call it the UFO, and honestly, it is hard to argue with that name. Back in the 1980s, an ambitious entrepreneur had a wonderfully optimistic idea: build a revolving restaurant that would spin slowly above Amsterdam while guests enjoyed their dinner and the view. A dream, really. A very expensive dream, as it turned out. 

Amsterdam has a long tradition of grand ideas meeting complicated budgets, and this was no exception. When the revolving restaurant plan was quietly shelved, the building needed a new purpose. So the UFO was fused together with the apartment above it, creating one of the most spectacularly unusual homes in the entire city. And who moves into a golden UFO? Naturally, some of Amsterdam's most colourful residents. Over the years the spacecraft has housed celebrated DJs, oil tycoons, and founders of wildly successful companies. People who clearly had both the money and the imagination to live somewhere truly out of this world.