Anniversary Breakfast Amsterdam 750
27 October 2025
8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.
Celebrate the official anniversary of Amsterdam with a birthday breakfast in the Oude Kerk.
Celebrate the official anniversary of Amsterdam with a birthday breakfast in the Oude Kerk. As the city’s oldest building, it remains the last witness to Amsterdam’s earliest beginnings, when it was still a small settlement on the Amstel. In the run-up to this anniversary, the Oude Kerk is auctioning the very first vase by artist Navid Nuur. During the birthday breakfast, a film about his vase project (NN XXX) will premiere, alongside the presentation of a publication documenting the making process of the vases.
About the vase project (NN XXX)
Last winter, artist Navid Nuur created one hundred unique clay vases in the Oude Kerk. He took them into the city and rolled them along façades, doors, bridges and street furniture, so that the vases quite literally bear the impressions of Amsterdam. For the glaze he collected materials from all over the city: shells from the IJ, glass from cafés, charcoal from a kebab shop, ash from a pizzeria, and silt from the canals.
A new treasure for the old city vault
The Iron Chapel is Amsterdam’s former city vault. For centuries it served as the municipal archive, holding the city’s most important papers — among them the Toll Privilege of 1275, the oldest document in which the name Amsterdam is mentioned, regarded as the city’s official birth certificate. In 1892 the IJzeren Kapel lost its function when the chest of documents was moved to the City Archives, and the space has remained empty ever since. This became the starting point for Navid Nuur’s 2024 project NN XXX, created in response to the city’s jubilee. Just as the documents once gave the city its legitimacy, Nuur aims with this project to restore value to the chapel by once again making it a place of safekeeping.
100 vases for 100 years of art
Each year, in the run-up to Amsterdam’s official birthday on 27 October, a vase is auctioned. From 20 to 23 October 2025, we will auction the first vase and you will have the opportunity to place a bid. The Oude Kerk will use the proceeds to invite future artists, ensuring that buyers of the vases make new art in the Oude Kerk possible for the next century. If you are interested yourself, or know someone who may be, and would like to learn more, please contact us at
