Amsterdam is celebrating its 750th birthday - so let's celebrate its Middle Eastern influences

Which came first: chocolate and pistachio baklava or the Dubai chocolate bar? The first has no kunafa, but the two flavour profiles are similar enough for me to ponder the question.

I’ve brought my niece to Amsterdam’s east end to see De Gooyer, the biggest windmill in the Netherlands. A former public bathhouse, it’s the most accessible of these iconic buildings (just eight survive in the Dutch capital). We arrive from different ends: she’s been observing microbes at the Micropia museum, I was window-shopping in the luxury Nine Streets district. But now, our stomachs lead us across the intersection into nearby Javastraat.

A good thing, too, as we’re spoilt for choice. Dithering between a couscous bar, a full-on Iraqi-Kurdish meal at Tigris & Eufraat restaurant or Istanbul street-style rice and chicken, we end up at Divan Pastanesi, reputedly Amsterdam’s best baklava shop. The intense sugar rush, from mainlining kunafa, qatayef and more, sparks our quasi-historical debate.

This leafy street is the core of Amsterdam’s Arab neighbourhood, but it isn’t a halal-only area, unlike similar boroughs elsewhere in Europe. Here, bars sit alongside jalabiya boutiques, and you’ll hear Dutch, English and Arabic – or a pidgin of all three. We see that same pragmatism at the nearby Dappermarkt, a century-old market where Moroccan olives, Surinamese spices, Turkish fabrics and Dutch cheeses fill stalls six days a week.

The third culture experience comes alive in this area, in no small part because the live-and-let-live ethos is so fundamental to the Dutch character. If Amsterdam is a beacon of tolerance and individual freedom today, it’s despite, or because of, successive waves of migrants, as historian Russell Shorto writes. Immigration and asylum may be current social flashpoints, but each group – and its descendants – has undeniably enriched Dutch culture, visibly so in literature, fashion, politics and food.

People have lived around the city's Amstel river’s swampy mouth since the New Stone Age. But recorded history first mentions “Amstelledamme” in a toll privilege dated October 27, 1275. It’s the city’s official birth certificate.

As such, Amsterdam turns 750 years old this October. Celebrations have been under way for a year, with more than 200 landmark exhibitions, street festivals and canal concerts stretching well into 2026. A mammoth 75-hour party, to be held between October 24 and 27, focuses on local stories, art installations and shared tables. Mayor Femke Halsema will cut a 75-metre cake at 7.50am on the birthday itself, followed by a multi-venue concert. There are exhibitions, interactive walking tours, and a new multimedia attraction, Amsterdam in Motion, charting the city’s evolution.

Regardless, October is a beautiful time to visit. Though we’re past the summer, climate change has brought warmer autumns, so sitting on one of the city’s famous terraces is very doable. Shoulder season also spells fewer tourists: cue less jostling at the major museums, with show tickets easier to come by (but book sightseeing well in advance). And then, fall foliage in one of Europe’s leafiest capitals immediately makes every cobbled, canal-side photo Instagram-worthy.

But today it’s raining, so we’ve spent the afternoon with mummies – the ancient Egyptian cat, falcon and human kind. We’re at Allard Pierson Museum. Home to the Amsterdam University’s archaeological treasures (including some stunning ancient Coptic jewellery), it connects civilisations from the Nile to the Amstel. A temporary exhibition, Glass Made in Antiquity, shows how modern sculptors such as Bert Frijns work with the Byzantine glass moulding tradition.

Visitors will want to plan for the Palestinian Film Festival (PFFA) from October 9 to 12, now in its 10th year. The 25-film schedule is led by Arab and Tarzan Nasser’s Once Upon a Time in Gaza, recently feted at the Cannes Film Festival. Also being screened is From Ground Zero, a collection of 22 shorts making up Palestine’s Oscar entry, which includes a virtual conversation with Ramallah-based producer Rashid Masharawi.

A parallel programme of workshops, food-storytelling and olive oil tasting is curator Nihal Rabbani’s way of bringing her homeland alive. The PFFA almost ended in 2024 when a long-standing cinema partner pulled out, but five other cinemas stepped into the breach. This year’s PFFA spans seven locations, Rabbani said in a recent interview, and will spotlight 750 stories across Amsterdam.

Other Middle Eastern stories included in the project tell of the city’s first Moroccan mosque (1972); the Kinship Library, about the Turkish “guest workers” from the 1960s; and the Intersnacks friterie, where owner Mohamed Bouhali engages young people struggling with issues of identity and belonging.

Some of these will still be celebrated in 2075, when future residents open a time capsule from this year. Buried at Dam Square last Saturday, it contains predictions, poetry, portraits, a video about life in 2025 (matcha lattes and fat bikes feature heavily), and a magazine about freedom and diversity created by the Voice of Tolerance youth community with the Dutch-Sudanese model and artist Maha Eljak.

This wide-ranging diversity will hit home for many Dubai residents. The two cities have much in common. Each has taken charge of its geography, redrawing its map with canals and man-made islands. And both began as small seaside trading villages, growing into global financial centres and attracting people from every corner of the planet.

Ethos apart, Amsterdam has enough familiarity for Middle Eastern and Muslim travellers to enjoy a sense of comfort. Halal food is widely available, shisha bars commonplace and there are more than 40 mosques.

My niece and I have now crossed town to the Geldersekade on the city’s working waterfront, where new ideas and people, including Arab and Persian scientists and diplomats, streamed into the 16th-century global financial capital. The picturesque street once flanked the city moat; it now borders the red-light district. We pass the Waag bulwark, where tobacco, guns and pepper from the East were weighed before entering and leaving the port. Outside, on the Nieuwmarkt, you can buy the same things available then: cheese, flowers, clothes – but also that modern classic, the fridge magnet.

There’s more kitschy tat at the Flower Market 20 minutes away. Sadly, overtourism has left few of the fresh blooms as immortalised in a painting by Abdellah Zaki, a 1970s artist and migrant worker often called the Moroccan Vincent Van Gogh (and after whom the city named a bridge). But there are an astonishing variety of tulip bulbs here – and another connection to the Middle East.

Tulips came to the Netherlands from Turkey in the 16th century. By the 1630s, a commodities market had sprung up, the historian Geert Mak writes, and a single bloom of the extremely rate Semper Augustus variety changed hands for 10,000 guilders, three times the cost of a small estate. The city’s traders were building their fortunes around this time; their mark visible on these Unesco-inscribed concentric waterways today: leaning canal houses that were once home, shop and warehouse all in one.

By now, we’re at canal’s end on Prins Hendrikkade street, with national monuments leading to the central station. Peter the Great visited these docks to study Dutch boatbuilding. In a 17th-century naval storehouse across the quay is the National Maritime Museum (Het Scheepvaartmuseum), housing a tiny collection of nautical charts from the Gulf and a permanent display framing how maritime trade shaped today’s urban centres; the replica of an 18th-century East Indiaman ship moored outside is an Instagram magnet.

We turn to face the squat, turreted Schreierstoren. The name means corner tower in modern Dutch – the word is a homophone for criers’ tower, and you’ll be told women wept here for husbands embarking on arduous journeys to the colonies.

Just behind it is our last stop for the day: A Beautiful Mess. The community cafe features spicy Iraqi chicken, vegan oyster mushroom shawarma, Eritrean-style roasted cauliflower and Ukrainian-inspired carrot and beetroot salad, but you’ll always find homemade saj and a range of dips on offer.

It’s run by people who made arduous journeys to reach the safety of the Netherlands (the team avoids the term refugee because it signifies a transient status). Staff gain local work experience, learn the language, and, hopefully, integrate into Dutch society.

There’s koshari on the menu today and I order it right away. The delightful mix of rice, lentils, crispy onions and tangy tomato sauce couldn’t be a more appropriate representation of Amsterdam’s multiculturality.