Moments from Holland Festival, ITA

The Holland Festival, founded in 1947 in the aftermath of the Second World War as a deliberate statement that Dutch cultural life had survived and intended to flourish again, is the Netherlands' oldest and most significant performing arts festival, spanning theatre, opera, dance, and contemporary music each June across venues throughout Amsterdam. Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, ITA, formerly known as the Stadsschouwburg, is one of its central stages, a grand nineteenth-century theatre on Leidseplein that has become closely associated with the festival's more ambitious theatrical programming, including its resident ensemble's own internationally touring productions.

Because Holland Festival programming leans deliberately experimental and international, don't expect conventional, easily digestible theatre, the festival has built its reputation specifically on commissioning boundary-pushing work from major international directors and companies. If you're attending a performance at ITA specifically, the building itself, with its ornate nineteenth-century auditorium, is worth arriving early for, and Leidseplein around it is one of Amsterdam's liveliest squares, easy to combine with dinner or a drink before curtain.