At the head of the one façade breaks the pattern, because it is made of wood in a street of brick. Of the hundreds of timber houses Amsterdam once had, two are still standing, and this is one of them. The other hides away in the . After the fires of the sixteenth century the city council banned timber as a building material, and as Amsterdam rebuilt itself in stone this house of about 1550 was left behind among the brick. The front leans gently forward, the way old timber does, and the beam ends still jut out of it.
Behind it, sailors drank their last glass before signing on a few hundred metres away. The story goes that those who had drunk their wages settled the bill with a monkey brought back from the . Before long the lodging house was full of monkeys and full of fleas, and anyone walking back up the dyke the next morning, scratching, was told he had clearly been staying at 't Aepjen.
The pleasing part is that the city archive shows no sign that an inn ever stood here. What it does hold is the name of an early resident: Jan Claesz 'int Aepgen. So the pub may simply be named after a man, and the whole expression with him.
We head into the Zeedijk, away from the church, until number 63 comes up on the far side of the street.
Sources. Story: https://historiek.net/in-de-aap-gelogeerd-zijn/60549/ and https://isgeschiedenis.nl/nieuws/herkomst-van-in-de-aap-gelogeerd-zijn Photos: Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, via Wikimedia Commons
