Under the bridge deck in front of you lies a shelter from 1947, built to hold two thousand six hundred people. The bridge itself was designed by , begun in 1936 and finished only in 1947 because of the war, and in those same years the space beneath it was dug out in case the next war came from the air.
That war stayed away and the cellar found another use. In 1968 young people took it over as the beat cellar Lijn 3, which made it the city's first youth centre. It stood empty for a long stretch after that, until volunteers turned it into a cultural centre in 2011, run without profit, with music, film and debate under a road with trams passing over it.
That closes the circle of this walk. The park began as the property of an association of gentlemen who decided who was allowed in, and it ends at a room where the door stands open and nobody sells admission.
Thank you for walking with us. If you want more of this city, our walk through the follows the courtyards and the local lore of that district, and our Pride walk runs from the Zeedijk to the .
To get back to the start, head into the park again and keep to the path going east, a little under ten minutes to the gate on the Stadhouderskade. Enjoy the rest of your day in Amsterdam.
Sources. Story: Open Monumentendag Amsterdam, Vondelbunker, shelter for 2,600 people in the Vondelbrug; Vondelbunker, on the collective and the 2011 reopening; Amsterdam op de kaart, Vondelbrug, P.L. Kramer Photos: Elekes Andor, 2019, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
