Amsterdam's queer history, in one afternoon walk

Amsterdam is easy to love and easy to rush. The queer history is right there in the street, but most visitors walk past it on the way to somewhere else. Give it one slow afternoon.

Start on the Zeedijk at Café 't Mandje. Bet van Beeren, a lesbian, opened it in 1927, and for decades it was a place where sailors, sex workers and queer women drank side by side. It reopened in 2008 and still feels like a living room.

Walk west to the Westermarkt, next to the Westerkerk. The Homomonument was unveiled there in 1987: three pink granite triangles for the past, the present and the future. It was the first monument in the world to remember gay men and lesbians killed under Nazi rule. People still leave flowers.

Finish around Reguliersdwarsstraat and the canals for a drink. The Netherlands became the first country to open civil marriage to same-sex couples in 2001, and you can feel how normal that has become here.

If you want the stories behind the stones, go with someone who knows them. That is what a Queer Hosted host does.