Wooden House (In den Aepjen)

The wooden house was built in 1550 and is one of the two remaining original wooden houses in Amsterdam. In the 17th century the owner of ‘In the monkey’, at that time a tavern, asked one of his guests to bring back a monkey from the tropics in order to settle a debt. Other sailors started to bring back monkeys until the tavern was full of monkeys... and lice. Someone who scratched his head back then had probably spent the night here. The Dutch expression ‘je bent in de aap gelogeerd’ (you spent the night in the monkey) is still used, meaning that you are in trouble.