The City of Amsterdam has announced it will close 43 of its 228 coffeeshops because they are located too close to schools.

In doing so, Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen “reluctantly” follows up a federal government directive to establish ‘distance criteria’ between schools and coffeeshops. »

A national ban on the sale of fresh hallucinogenic ‘magic’ mushrooms will take effect in the Netherlands on December 1, 2008. In dried form those mushrooms already were banned under Dutch Opiate Laws.

The ban was first proposed in October 2007, after as series of high-profile deaths and injuries linked to magic mushroom trips — most of them involving tourists in Amsterdam. »

Amsterdam’s medieval core is divided in an ‘Old Side’ and a ‘New Side.’ We’ll show you which is which, and tell you how these terms came into use. And yes, the Old Side is actually slightly newer than the New Side.

Included in this entry: the oldest known city map of Amsterdam, painted in 1538. »