A tourist who arrives at Amsterdam's central station has to take numerous hurdles before the historic Dutch capital reveals it beauty. Construction work, tram tracks and kamikaze cyclists aside, the entrance to the city shows the worst Amsterdam has to offer. The Damrak, the main street into the city centre, is lined with neon-lit bars, kebab shops, cheap souvenir stores, an arcade and a sex museum. Just left of that is the famous 'Wallen' red light district with its window prostitution, legal and illegal drug trade and the stag parties that are drawn to it.

Amsterdam has long had a worldwide reputation as a Sodom and Gomora, but its historic city centre has become increasingly seedy over the past few decades. Now the city government wants to turn the notorious red light district and the strip between the central station and Dam square into a yuppie playground for what the French like to call 'bobos', or 'bourgeois bohemians'. The project, dubbed 1012 after the postal code for the area, aims to attract exclusive shops, creative businesses and trendy bars and restaurants. It has to make the area attractive and livable without completely abandoning its naughty identity. Click to enlarge.

"Window prostitution and erotic entertainment are inextricably linked with the Wallen, and they have major economic significance for the area and for Amsterdam as a whole," says Ronald Wiggers of the housing association NV Stadsgoed, which is involved in the redevelopment of the area by buying up buildings. "But in the past twenty years the neighbourhood has been neglected and as a result sex has come to dominate it."

Cheese instead of cannabis

The 1012 project is based on three strategies: redeveloping the streets and canals, discouraging activities likely to attract crime, and realising ten 'key projects'. One of those projects is the restoration of a museum and former church, Ons' Lieve Heer op Solder (Our Lord in the attic), a typical canal house with a hidden Catholic church, established during the Reformation period (1517–1648) , when Catholics were forbidden to hold public services.

The museum is currently undergoing a 15-million-euro refurbishment. It will come to include a house on the opposite side of its back alley, which will be linked with an underground passage with space for a store, a a cafeteria and an exhibition space. It is hoped that the museum's 100,000 potential visitors, most of them foreign tourists, will provide the impulse for the area's transformation.

Another major project is the upgrading of the Victoria hotel, opposite the central station, and the expansion of the grand old Krasnapolsky hotel at Dam square.

The Victoria is taking over the adjacent former land register's office, which will be turned into a Berlin-style Art'otel. Its first two floors will be dedicated to "hip, trendy and contemporary" cultural activities. The cheap tourist shops in the alley between the two hotels will be replaced with a (regular) coffee shop, and a cheese store and museum, which will be making its own cheese.

Refurbishings hit by recession

But the project is suffering from the impact of the economic crisis, as the plans for the Krasnapolsky hotel show. A 150-million-euro project to move the hotel's parking facilities underground and replace the current structure with 150 extra rooms has been scrapped in favour of a less ambitious 40-million-euro refurbishing of the existing hotel.

On the Wallen things are moving at a lower pace. "Relocating sex business, or transforming a brothel into a restaurant, takes time and patience. A lot of people have to come to terms," says Wiggers.

Sex will not be banned entirely from the area. Just last week the famous Casa Rosso sex theatre won a three-year legal battle against the city, which wanted to shut it down. Casa Rosso's owner Jan Otten was suspected of having laundered the ransom money from the 1983 kidnapping of beer magnate Freddy Heineken, but the allegation was never proved.

Wiggers is pleased with that Casa Rosso will be allowed to stay open. "The social control that existed in de Wallen until the 1970s has been lost. An oldtimer like Otten could help bring back that atmosphere to the area."

Or, as borrough council chairman Els Iping says. "We are not against sex, only against its excesses. High concentrations of brothels coffee shops simply attract the wrong kind of people. What we are aiming for is a mix of quality stores, housing and businesses togther with the traditional window brothels."