View of Oudezijds Voorburgwal with the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam

Amsterdam's canals stank. The city had no sewers and no piped water, and all kinds of refuse went straight into them. Jan van der Heyden painted that too. The small wooden structure by the bridge is a privy, a public toilet that emptied into the canal, and close by a woman is doing her laundry in the same water. This is the Oudezijds Voorburgwal, the second-oldest canal in the city, at the stretch called the Bierkaai, where ships unloaded barrels of beer, most of it brought from Hamburg. Above it rises the Oude Kerk, the Old Church, whose carillon had been completely renewed in 1658 and 1659. Van der Heyden set down the separate bricks of the façades himself, but the many small figures along the quay were probably painted by Adriaen van de Velde, whom he regularly hired for that job. The panel later belonged to Prince William VIII of Hesse-Kassel, to the Empress Josephine at Malmaison and to Tsar Alexander I, was sold in 1940 for the museum Hitler planned in Linz, and came to the Mauritshuis after the war.