In mid-August, café Amstel Fifty Four was closed. This place was the successor to the famous Amstel Taveerne, which was opened exactly 60 years earlier and was the center of the typical Amsterdam gay scene alongside the Amstel river.

The Amstel Taveerne was opened on August 27, 1964 by Adje van Besouw and his mother, both from Breda. Under Adje, the place with its old Dutch inn interior became a gay café with Dutch schlagers and Amsterdam songs from the Jordaan.

From the start, the cheerful atmosphere and sing-along music also attracted many straight visitors, with which the Amstel Taveerne contributed to the acceptance and integration of homosexuals in a natural and accessible way.

Adje van Besouw died unexpectedly in 1987, after which the place was taken over by his employee Frans Meulenberg. During Queen's Day and Pride Amsterdam Meulenberg organized large street parties along the Amstel, a tradition that ended in 2017.




In the autumn of 2007, shortly before the death of Frans Meulenberg, the Amstel Taveerne was completely modernized by his partner Valy Pintiuc and renamed Amstel Fifty Four, referring to both the house number and the legendary nightclub Studio 54 in New York.

In 2014, the café's golden anniversary was celebrated, but after that it slowly went downhill. From 2010 onwards, more and more gay places along the Amstel and in the Halvemaansteeg disappeared, as a result of which Amstel Fifty Four also gradually lost its gay audience.




The place was eventually sold, after which the new owner closed the doors in mid-August, just before the 60th anniversary could have been celebrated. At the beginning of September, it reopened as a normal café under the name Café aan de Amstel.

This was not only the definitive end to one of Amsterdam's best-known gay cafés, but also that of the once extensive gay scene along the Amstel.

> See also the full and illustrated history of Amstel Taveerne in Dutch.

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