Rooms and doors of Museumplein
The doors here are large and formal. Hotels in converted villas have marble steps, heavy front doors and a night porter who expects visitors after the concert and thinks nothing of them. Rented apartments sit on the upper floors of houses built for one wealthy family, which means high ceilings, tall windows and radiators that take a while to warm a big room in winter. A few modern hotels along the edges of the square have keycard lifts and wide corridors. What almost every room in this quarter shares is space: beds that are not pushed against a wall, and enough floor for a woman to set down her bag and work around you from both sides. Readers who arrive after an evening at the Concertgebouw often want the booking set for half past ten or eleven, when the square outside has emptied and the museum facades are lit but the doors have long been locked.











