Het Sieraad

From workshop courtyard to dancefloor

Under a sixteen-meter glass roof, the former courtyard of a 1924 vocational school lights up every week as a club. Het Sieraad —the Jewel— occupies a pentagonal rijksmonument of the Amsterdam School in De Baarsjes, designed by Arend Jan Westerman between 1921 and 1924 and surrounded by the waters of the Admiralengracht, the Postjeswetering, and the Kostverlorenvaart. Brick walls, pillars reaching upwards, and large-format stained glass windows —featuring reliefs by Hildo Krop on the facade— give the night a scale that almost no other venue in Amsterdam can replicate.

From metallurgy to house and techno

The building trained carpenters, mechanics, and metalworkers; later it became the Edelsmedenschool. After the school closed in the early 2000s, the 2005-2007 restoration recovered the original volume and covered the courtyard. The venue was already hosting events when, in 2022, the regular club night programming began —a 2019 plan postponed by the pandemic. The Het Sieraad By Night team committed to the monument itself: you cannot tear down a wall, so the club is built around the building's acoustics and light.

Two scales and a weekly agenda

The programming combines house and techno —from the intimate to the melodic— with international DJs and local names. The Atrium is the large dancefloor, covered year-round; the Plaatwerkerij functions as a small room for long sets and the club's own collectives. During the Amsterdam Dance Event, the building is filled with showcases; the rest of the year there are nights from 23:00 to 05:00, daytime events, and residencies. Parties like Flourish, LatinVillage, or the marathons by Rose Ringed show that the venue is not limited to a single dancefloor genre.

Cardioid bass in a protected building

In 2024, it became the first nightclub in the Netherlands with a d&b audiotechnik KSL system, designed to push the bass toward the audience and not toward the listed bricks. An asymmetric light plan runs along the columns and lines of the Atrium. In the same complex, there are lockers, a terrace by the canal, accessible access, and the Daalder restaurant, but in the early hours, the building reads as a club: audience mostly 21+, smart dress code, and a dancefloor that remains, literally, a glass-covered school courtyard.