Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Amsterdam inside the Singelgracht

Amsterdam's crescent of canals was a real-estate project of genius. Around 1600 the city drained swampland beyond its medieval core and pushed its defences out to the Singelgracht, digging concentric waterways lined with gabled merchants' houses. The largest, most coherent urban extension of its age became a template for town planning worldwide well into the 19th century. UNESCO inscribed the 17th-century canal ring in 2010.