With this warm weather, you only want one thing, right? Nice to lie in front of pampus. And where better to do that than on Fort Island Pampus? Yet the expression has nothing to do with the island, says guide Nico Kan.
Pampus was a shallow channel in the Zuiderzee, off the coast of Muiden and Amsterdam. “In the 17th and 18th centuries, VOC ships could no longer pass through. First the cargo was transferred to smaller ships. Later an Amsterdammer came up with an invention: ship camels. With them they lifted the ship, so that it could sail to Amsterdam on its own. The ships were lifted one by one. All the ships behind them were waiting for their turn, so they were in front of Pampus,” Kan says.
The island of Pampus was built in the late 1800s as part of De Stelling van Amsterdam, a defense line that was supposed to protect the capital. “Amsterdam was the place where the government and the royal family withdrew.”
Text continues below the photo.
Never used
Yet Fort Island Pampus was ultimately never used. “The Netherlands was never attacked at that time and it went out of use in 1932. It was intended to stop the enemy from the North, but that was no longer necessary when the Afsluitdijk came.”
Nevertheless, the island still has a function for day trippers. “It’s nice and cool underground here. If you don’t get excited and watch a movie, it’s bearable,” says a visitor.