In the heart of the old Jewish quarter of Amsterdam sits a half-hidden monument to the failures of 1960s urban planning: Mr. Visserplein. It is flanked by the historic Portuguese Synagogue to the east and the Moses and Aaron Catholic Church to the west, and, on its southeast corner is the Jewish Historical Museum, which has, since 1987, been located in a complex of four smaller seventeenth- and eighteenth-century synagogues. Although it is well-disguised today, Mr. Visserplein was once an integral part of the stymied 1967 urban renewal project that sought to “modernize” the center of the city with the construction of new highways and a new metro line to the Bijlmermeer housing project southeast of the city. At the time of its construction, Mr. Visserplein was more of an interchange than, as its name suggests, a public square (plein). It was designed to funnel car, tram, and pedestrian traffic through a series of overlapping concrete tunnels at the point where two proposed four-lane roadways, three smaller streets, and a tram line would converge. While the existing streets and buildings in the area were totally demolished in the construction of the square, the religious buildings were left untouched, attesting to the neighborhood's history as a refuge for non-Protestants.

Most of the other structures ringing the square are much newer, built on sites that have been razed and rebuilt multiple times in the last fifty years.