Three Flights Up at Number Fifty-Eight

A booking message came in with a canal address. The street name was long and complete, the number was 58, and after it there was a hyphen and three capital letters: III. The guest had copied the whole line from the rental confirmation, exactly as it was. They mentioned later that they had no idea what the letters meant. They copied them because they were there.

That was the right thing to do, and here is why.

What III tells her

In Amsterdam, the III after a house number is a floor. It means the third floor above the street. Old canal houses are tall and narrow, and many have been divided into separate homes, one on each floor. They share a front door, or they each have their own small door side by side, and each has a bell. The floor mark tells a visitor which bell to press and how many stairs to climb.

Without the III, the address would have been correct and still incomplete. She would have reached number 58, looked at four bells, and had to message to ask which one. At night, in the rain, that is two or three minutes on a doorstep.

Counting floors the Dutch way

The guest came from a country where the floor at street level is called the first floor. So in their mind, the third floor was two flights up. Dutch counting starts one level higher: the street-level floor has no number and is simply the ground floor. What they would call the second floor is the Dutch I. So III means three flights of stairs, not two.

This made no difference to the booking, because the mark was copied correctly. But it made a difference when the guest walked home that evening with shopping. They stopped at the second landing, tried their key in the wrong door, and then understood. They mentioned it in the thread with a laugh the next day.

The stairs themselves

Canal house stairs are something visitors remember. They are steep, sometimes almost like a ladder, and they turn in tight corners. There is usually no lift. None of that is a problem for a booking. It simply means that the right floor matters more than in a hotel. A wrong floor in a hotel is a short ride. A wrong floor in a canal house is three flights down and up again.

The bell with someone else's name

There was one more small detail. The bell for the third floor had a name on it, and it was not the guest's name. It was the name of the owner of the flat. Many rented flats in the city are like this. The guest had noticed it when they arrived, and added a line to the message: bell marked III, name on it is not mine.

That line did as much work as the floor mark. She did not have to wonder if she had the right bell. She pressed it, the guest answered, and the street door opened.

Other marks you may see

III is common, but it is not the only mark. You may also see I, II or IV. Some addresses use digits instead: 58-3. And some use Dutch words:

• hs, for the home at street level;
• sous, for the home a few steps below the street;
• boven, for the home upstairs.

A letter after the number, as in 58A, is another kind of mark. It usually means one house divided into two homes, each with a door of its own. The guide to Amsterdam addresses goes through each of these in turn.

The lesson, in one line

Copy everything. If a mark is on your confirmation, it is there for a reason, even if you do not know the reason. You do not need to understand an Amsterdam address to write it correctly. You only need to leave nothing out. If you want to add a few words of your own, such as three flights up, add them after the mark. Never instead of it.

The guest from number 58 booked again later in the week. Their second message had the same address line, the same III, and one extra line: I know the stairs now.