Dam Square is where Amsterdam began. Some 800 years ago, a dam was thrown across the river Amstel here to hold back the sea, and a fishing village grew up on either side. The town took its name from that act of engineering: Amstelredam, dam on the Amstel, Amsterdam.

Today the square contains two buildings that tell the whole story of the city's rise. The National Monument, a tall white column, commemorates the civilian and military dead of the Second World War. Across the square stands the Royal Palace, which began life as a Town Hall in 1648, the year Amsterdam's liberation war with Spain ended. When it was completed in 1665, it was the largest secular building in the world, crowned with a weather vane shaped like a ship.

VoiceMap's tours use Dam Square to trace Amsterdam's transformation from peat bog to global empire, connecting the square's monuments and architecture to the merchants, seafarers, and Golden Age ambitions that made the city.