Graffiti and street art have always been present in Amsterdam’s subway tunnels. It is part of our city’s cultural heritage.

With Amsterdam’s local TV station AT5 I walked through a short piece of subway line 51’s tunnel that used to connect Amsterdam and Amstelveen and will be demolished to make room for the expansion of Amsterdam’s business district.

Not all graffiti can be viewed as beautiful and not all graffiti spots offer the surface or circumstances for artists to make high standing pieces of art. The Amstelveen-tunnel is of those spots. The raw concrete and the 24-7 traffic on Line 51 prohibit artists to spend a long time inside. What we see is fast graffiti and graffiti dating back to the early 00’s. It contains the work of writers who have been around in the scene, who go all city, but in this tunnel not with their best work.

The url could not be embedded in this post. Video can be viewed on AT5 (Link)

With thanks to AT5 for the request to do graffiti archeology in an old tunnel and to Zuidplus for the facilitation.