Amsterdam Tourist Guide: Red Light Secrets (aka Museum of Prostitution)
When you cross the threshold of the Museum of Prostitution in Amsterdam, also called Red Light Secrets, you will step into a world that most only gaze at from the outside. Amsterdam is known for its tolerance and open-minded attitudes, and the prostitution museum tries to remove sex-industry taboos and offer insights for curious adults. You can find this unique museum in the heart of the famous Red Light District, nestled between two functioning brothels. Unlike the rest of this district, photographs are allowed in the Museum of Prostitution, so feel free to fully document your experience.
Crossing the Threshold
This small museum was once a brothel, so it seems fitting that the seventeenth-century historic canal house has been turned into the world’s first and only museum dedicated to prostitution. Designed to be informative, interesting and enlightening, this museum is a wonderful opportunity for you to peek behind the velvet curtain. With a mix of exhibits, video displays and audio presentations, you will find information on the prostitution industry and learn about the history of the Red Light District, as well as gain perspective from prostitutes’ first-hand accounts.
Insight Inside the Museum of Prostitution
The Museum of Prostitution offers more than just a glimpse inside a typical Amsterdam brothel. You can also gain powerful insight into the daily life of a prostitute. Through the audio guides, narrated by a former prostitute, you will have the opportunity to listen to the secrets of some the women who work in the industry. You can sit in one of Amsterdam’s famous red-lit windows to experience what this feels like. There are also large, window-sized screens projecting recorded simulations of passers-by and potential customers. You can sit on high stools in-front of the mock-window and get an eye-opening chance to view the world through the eyes of an Amsterdam prostitute.
Exhibits in the Prostitution Museum
Along with views from a worker’s perspective, you can also walk through exhibits which reconstruct a typical prostitute’s room. Offering impressions of both basic and up-scale brothels, you can also find strikingly ordinary and humanising objects belonging to the people who work in this profession. Another interesting exhibit is simply a display of the items customers have accidentally left behind over the years. If you like the idea of learning the secrets of ordinary visitors, you can take a read of the anonymous confessions wall, and perhaps even add your own clandestine thoughts.
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