From above, Amsterdam is a city drawn in water. A ring of canals bends around the old centre in concentric arcs, the wide IJ runs along its north edge, and outside the ring the polder canals run in long straight lines. The four posters below are built around those shapes, from the whole canal belt down to the street names of one neighbourhood.
The maps below are real exports from the Carto-Art editor. Each one keeps its complete composition, framing, palette, typography and title, behind a customization link that loads it into the editor. Move the frame, change the title, or swap the colours, then download the result. The map data comes from OpenStreetMap, and the exports keep that attribution in the image.
The canal ring, drawn as water
For a hallway or a narrow wall, and for anyone who wants the shape that makes Amsterdam recognisable from above.
This poster takes the streets out of the city and leaves only the water. Land prints as warm cream, every canal as a line of deep teal, so the canal belt reads as four nested arcs on the west side of the centre, with the Singelgracht closing the outside of the ring. That ring is the reason the city looks like itself from the air: UNESCO describes the canal district as a network of canals in concentric arcs west and south of the historic old town, inside the Singelgracht.
Across the top of the frame the IJ and the harbour basins open into wide solid shapes of water. The ring opens towards the east, towards the Amstel, and below the ring the polder canals run in long straight lines towards the bottom edge. There are no streets, no buildings and no labels anywhere on it, so the water does all the work. The Coastal palette prints all of the water in a single deep teal over cream, with pale green where the city keeps parks and woodland, and the title sits in a classic serif at the bottom centre on clean land. It is a 2:3 portrait.
The region around the city
For a wide wall, or for anyone who wants Schiphol, the Markermeer and the Zaanstreek on the same sheet.
Where the first poster stops at the ring, this one steps back to the whole region. The open water of the Markermeer and IJmeer fills the top right corner with shallow banks and flat peninsulas. The top left is the Zaanstreek, where the polder drainage runs in a dense grid of straight ditches. Amsterdam's own street network sits in the middle, the ring motorway and the railways loop around it, and Schiphol's runway fan and grey apron sit in the lower left. Town names and polder names are printed in a vintage serif, parks are outlined in pale green, and the land keeps the faint yellow-green of worked polder.
The Warm Gray palette sets the land in warm cream, the water in slate blue and the motorways in dark grey, which is what lets the road and rail lines read across a 36 kilometre frame. It is a 3:2 landscape, so it suits a wide wall rather than a hallway.
The centre at night
For a square frame, a dark wall, or anyone who knows the old centre street by street.
This is the dense middle of the city after dark. The IJ and the harbour basins are the wide navy shapes across the top third. Below them, the tight street grid of the medieval centre and the canal belt print as fine grey lines on near-black land, with the canals in bright blue and the larger roads and bridges picked out in a warmer gold. Railway lines run as pale hatched bands, and there is not a single label on the map.
The Gold Standard palette is the one dark palette in this set: near-black land, dark navy water, gold roads. The title is set in a condensed capital face with no subtitle, so the whole square belongs to the map. If you hang one poster above a dark desk, this is the one.
The Jordaan, street by street
For a house in the Jordaan, or a gift for someone who lives there.
This is the poster to choose when the address matters. The Prinsengracht runs down the right side of the frame with the Keizersgracht, Herengracht and Singel beyond it, so the western edge of the canal belt sits in the corner of the picture. The Brouwersgracht crosses the top right, and the Elandsgracht, Rozengracht, Lauriergracht, Westerstraat and Lindengracht cut across the district. The Nassaukade and Marnixplein are along the left edge, the Haarlemmerweg crosses the top left with its pale green parkland, and the water in the top right corner is the edge of the Westerdok.
Every one of those streets is named on the poster and there is no big city label competing with the title, so the street and canal names carry the map. The Blush palette prints the land in a pale blush, the water in teal and keeps the roads quiet. The title is set in a modern sans at the bottom, in a 4:5 portrait.
Make the map yours
Every map in this post can be changed. Work in this order:
- Set the framing. On the canal-ring poster, keep the whole ring inside the frame, because the arcs are the point. If your own neighbourhood matters more than the ring, open the Jordaan poster and drag the map to your street. On the regional plate, pan north to give the Markermeer more room, or south-east to bring Almere's edge into the frame.
- Choose your colours. Pick a palette whose water reads as blue: Coastal, Sage, Warm Gray and Gold Standard all keep the canals a believable colour, while several other palettes turn water purple, which looks wrong on a city built around canals. Turning labels on for the canal-ring poster gives you a second, more diagrammatic version of the same frame.
- Add a title. Short titles fit best. Try a neighbourhood such as "DE PIJP" or "OUD-WEST", "A'DAM" with a year underneath, or "THUIS" in place of the place name. On the night poster, keep the title short so it stays a label rather than a heading.
- Inspect the result. Check the smallest street names on the Jordaan poster, the hairline canals on the canal-ring poster and the edges of the frame before exporting.
Downloading and printing your map
Carto-Art exports your map as a digital PNG image. You can print the file at home or send it to a print provider. A download does not include a physical poster or frame.
Choose your intended paper size before exporting and match the image's aspect ratio to the print: fitting a portrait image into a wider frame means cropping or borders. The canal-ring and Jordaan posters are portraits, the regional plate is a landscape, and the night poster is square.
The editor's print presets export at 300 pixels per inch, from a 12 inch long edge up to 36 inches. A 12 × 18 inch print, for example, needs a 3,600 × 5,400 pixel image. Check the dimensions of your downloaded file against your printer's requirements.
At print sizes, fine street labels are the first thing to become hard to read. If the small text matters, choose a tighter crop with fewer labels before exporting.
Free exports are available within the current plan limits and include a small cartoart.net watermark; Carto Plus removes the watermark and the export limits. Your account page shows what your plan includes.
Questions about your Amsterdam map
Which poster should I start from for my own address?
If you live inside the canal belt, start from the Jordaan poster or open the canal-ring poster and zoom in one step. If you live further out, in Nieuw-West, Zuid or Noord, start from the regional plate: it covers the whole built-up area and the towns around it, and you can zoom into your own district from there.
Are the canal names printed on the posters?
Only on the Jordaan poster, which names the Prinsengracht, Keizersgracht, Herengracht, Singel and the cross streets. The canal-ring poster is deliberately water only, with labels switched off. If you want the ring with its canal names, open that poster in the editor and turn city labels and street names on.
Will the street names be readable on a large print?
On the Jordaan poster, yes: the frame is about 2.4 kilometres wide, so the street names print large. At the smallest preset sizes the names along the narrowest streets are the first to become hard to read, and if you plan a small print it is better to zoom in further and accept fewer names than to print the full district tiny.
Which poster suits a hallway, and which a wide wall?
The canal-ring and Jordaan posters are portraits, so they suit hallways, narrow walls and stairwells. The regional plate is a landscape for above a sofa, a bed or a sideboard. The night poster is square and works on its own or in a grid with other square frames.
Open the Amsterdam canal-ring poster in the editor and make it yours, or start from a blank map of anywhere at cartoart.net/editor.
