Amsterdam is without a doubt one of the most picturesque cities in the world. No wonder filmmakers have used the city as their decor for decades. In this blog we give you our top 5 famous movie filming locations in which Amsterdam plays a star role. Visit these locations from the water on a Amsterdam canal cruise!
In Ocean’s Twelve, Danny Ocean and his crew are back and planning a heist in Amsterdam. A number of hot shot actors including Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta Jones and Matt Damon came to Amsterdam in 2014 to shoot this picture, leaving a lot of Amsterdammers star struck along the way. The Amsterdam scenes were filmed in and around Amsterdam’s charming neighborhood The Nine Streets (or De Negen Straatjes as it’s called in Dutch).
In this 2014 drama film the protagonists are Hazel and Augustus, two teens who have both been diagnosed with life-threatening types of cancer. As they get to know each other better they take a trip to Amsterdam together and this is where they fall in love. One of the most romantic scenes of this movie was filmed on a canal side bench in the city center.
The exact location of the The Fault in Our Stars bench is in front of Leidsegracht 4, at the intersection with Herengracht. Ask the skipper of the the Open Boat Tours from Damrak to sail past it.
In this 1971 James Bond classic Sean Connery returns to the big screen as 007. The hunt for an illusive diamond smuggler leads him to Amsterdam. A small part of the movie was filmed in the Dutch capital, with one of the movie’s key scenes taking place along the river Amstel and the famous Skinny Bridge. The Amsterdam Canal Cruise which departs from Rijksmusuem passes underneath the Skinny Bridge.
Amsterdam’s liberal attitude towards drugs and prostitution is of course a recurrent theme in movies that take place here. There are a few famous but not-so-funny films that touch these subjects like Deuce Bigalow, European Gigolo. And then there are the cult classics like the second Harold & Kumar movie and the 2004 comedy Eurotrip.
The Amsterdam scenes in Eurotrip are supposed to represent the Red Light District but were in fact filmed along the Brouwersgracht, a canal in another part of the city.
This 2017 movie with Ryan Reynolds in one of the leading roles is a great action flick! True to its genre, Samuel L. Jackson’s shakes Amsterdam with high speed chases and gunfights to free his wife, who's played by Salma Hayek. It features sights of the beautiful Rijksmuseum and a crazy boat and motor cycle race at our canals. At Stromma Rijkmuseum you will start infront of the jail building in the movie.
In this action movie two female actresses steal the show. When one of the girls finds out the man that broke up with her is a spy, she and her friend travel through Europe to escape the death threaths from the villians that have it our for her ex-boyfriend. They contemplate life and the next moves in their adventure at a bench at Nieuwmarkt in the city centre of Amsterdam.
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