Twenty-two reasons
to look above the doorways.

Amsterdam has a peculiar habit of putting women in unexpected places.

On rooftops. Above doorways. In the middle of old stone façades. Sometimes holding a book or a child. Occasionally a whip.

You could spend days wandering along the canals without giving them a second thought.

Which would be a shame, really.

Because Amsterdam has some wonderfully strange stories to tell.

There's a tower named after women who supposedly cried as their husbands sailed away. Except the name might have nothing to do with crying.

A house decorated with six stone heads, supposedly commemorating robbers defeated by a fearless maid. The heads, as it turns out, belong to Roman gods.

And a small café where a woman once took a knife to her customers' neckties and hung the evidence from the ceiling.

Amsterdam has always had a certain sense of humor.

But its women's stories aren't all charming little curiosities.

Some are about money. A remarkable businesswoman helped finance the country's national bank, yet wasn't allowed to conduct business on the stock exchange herself. Another woman controlled her considerable fortune so firmly that she paid her husband an annual allowance.

Others are about the right to live differently.

A community of women built a life outside the usual expectations of marriage and convents. An artist made a successful business behind an ordinary canal-house façade. A young architect designed buildings under a name that wasn't quite her own.

And then there are the women who refused to leave things as they were.

Some arrived with spades. Others with speeches. A few brought a corset and a box of matches.

You'll find their traces scattered across the city, often in places that look entirely ordinary until someone tells you what happened there.

That's what makes Amsterdam such a pleasure to explore.

Its history isn't always hiding behind museum doors.

Sometimes it's just above your head, carved into a wall that thousands of people pass every day.

Twenty-two stories are waiting around the canals, courtyards, squares, and streets.

You may never look at an Amsterdam doorway quite the same way again.

You don't need to know what happens before you go. You only need somewhere worth walking toward.

JUNO PORTALS is designed primarily for women traveling alone.

That doesn't mean every experience has to be solitary. It means the product starts from a simple reality: sometimes you're already here, the day is yours, and you'd like a reason to go somewhere you might otherwise have passed.

Read the access note for the portal you choose. Some places are further out than they look on the map, and some are private or working places you only see from outside.

THE BURIAL SHE CHOSE depends on opening hours.

Prices and hours change. Check them on the day.

Curiosity gets you there. Your judgment always comes first.