New Amsterdam Zuid station entrance opens Sunday with music, sports and workshops
Amsterdam will celebrate the opening of the new Brittenpassage at Amsterdam Zuid station on Sunday, with a festival featuring live music, workshops, sporting activities and art. The celebrations will also mark the farewell to the station's existing Minervapassage, which will close on the same day for a major renovation lasting several years.
The event takes place between noon and 5 p.m., and is open to the public. Some workshops require advance registration because places are limited.
The existing Minervapassage will temporarily become a festival venue, with activities aimed at children, adults and families. The announced programme includes roller skating inside the station’s passage, the option of playing chess against professional chess players, including Woman Grandmaster Anna-Maja Kazarian and International Master Merijn van Delft, and free-running or table tennis.
There will also be a LEGO workshop and a large-scale painting workshop, where visitors can contribute to a large artwork alongside professional artists from Amsterdam's STRAAT Museum.
The Brittenpassage is a completely new passenger tunnel and entrance at Amsterdam Zuid station. It is located approximately 200 metres west of the existing Minervapassage, close to Parnassusweg.
The new passenger tunnel will be 15 metres wide and features a new indoor bicycle parking facility with space for 2,000 bicycles.
Seven shops will open inside the passage, which is expected to provide improved connections between trains, metros and trams, and more natural daylight and a wider, better-lit passage.
The new entrance is designed to accommodate the station's growing number of passengers. Amsterdam Zuid currently handles approximately 75,000 train passengers on a working day, while the wider station is expected to accommodate more than 200,000 daily passengers by 2030, ZJA reported.
The opening of the Brittenpassage also marks the end of the existing Minervapassage in its current form. The passenger tunnel will close from Sunday before undergoing a major reconstruction. It will be widened to approximately three times its current width and raised by 1.5 metres. The renovation is expected to take around three years.
“All parties have worked incredibly hard over the past few years. Now the moment has finally arrived, and our domestic and international passengers can travel to their destinations through a spacious, bright, ultra-modern passage with an attractive range of shops. This is a very proud station manager speaking,” Peter Hagen, the NS station manager at Amsterdam Zuid, said.
The Brittenpassage is part of Zuidasdok. This is one of the largest infrastructure projects in the Netherlands, involving ProRail, Rijkswaterstaat, and the Municipality of Amsterdam.