Berenstraat

Berenstraat, or Bear Street, is one of nine narrow, historic thoroughfares that cut through the concentric rings of Amsterdam’s seventeenth-century canal belt. These streets were laid out in the first half of the sixteen hundreds during the city's rapid expansion. The name itself serves as a remnant of the neighborhood's industrial past, when the area was a center for the leather and fur trade. Skilled craftsmen worked here to process animal skins, and the street names—including those for bears, wolves, and roe deer—indicated the specific types of pelts once handled in the workshops of each respective lane.