A neo-Gothic style
Directly behind the Queens Palace on the Dam square you’ll find our elegant 19th century building, now one of the few shopping malls in Amsterdam – Magna Plaza. This is the place to shop for designer clothing and fashion accessories.
Magna Plaza’s building has been designed in the Neo-Gothic style by a Dutch architect during the end of the 19th century P.C.Peters. It was a time when another famous Dutch architect Petrus J.H. Cuypers just completed the construction of the Rijksmuseum (1885) and the Central Station (1889), both full of historical references in their architecture.
The building’s interior consists of a central hall with galleries on two upper floors, surrounded by arcades and crowned by a sunroof. Back in the day, the public function of the building was limited to the ground floor, while the rest of the building was only accessible to personnel of the PTT. In 1987, the PTT announced that it intended to vacate the building and it was sold the next year to Larmag, a Swedish real estate developer, who intended to repurpose the building as a luxurious shopping mall. Maintaining and optimally using the monumental building was a main criterion. The construction started in February 1991. The exterior work was mostly limited to cleaning, repair and restoration of the facades. The interior of the building was completely rebuilt, maintaining the carrying structures and decorative elements.
