Centraal Station

The metro station lies beneath and in front of Amsterdam Centraal, the city's main railway station, and takes its name from it. On the metro the stop is simply called Centraal Station.

A metro station beneath running trains

Centraal Station got its first metro on 11 October 1980, when the tunnel from Waterlooplein to the station opened. Since then it has been the terminus of the lines now numbered 51, 53 and 54. That first tunnel meant the end of the pedestrian tunnel and the road in front of the station.

The most spectacular work came later. For the North/South Line a second metro station had to pass beneath the listed railway station while trains kept running. A new foundation went in under the building: a so-called table structure measuring 130 by 20 metres, standing on walls of tube piles up to 80 metres long. The 136-metre tunnel section under the station was built, like the three sections under the IJ, in a dock near the Sixhaven, then floated in and sunk into place. The water level was temporarily lowered to get the final section in. On 22 July 2018 line 52 called here with passengers for the first time.

The metro hall holds Tulpen Palepai by Jennifer Tee: an 18-metre mosaic made of 100,000 dried tulip petals, based on a palepai, a ship cloth from South Sumatra. Above the line 52 platforms hangs a large screen with a slow animation by David Claerbout, whose weather follows the forecast for the next 24 hours.