De Vergulde Gaper

Near the Anne Frank House and the famous Westertoren, lies De Vergulde Gaper. What once was a pharmacy is now one of the cosiest cafés in the city. De Vergulde Gaper, which means ‘the gilded yawner’, gets its name from a wooden head hanging on the outside wall. It impersonates a yawning man with a golden hat. In the 17th century in the Netherlands, these ‘yawners’ were used as a sign for a qualified pharmacy and to attract clients to the drugstore. Nowadays, fewer than 50 of these yawning heads remain in the Netherlands.

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