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The Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries 1578-1915 spans 30.000 large volumes, covering 3,5 centuries in time and 3,5 kilometres in length. It contains written and printed documents, parchments in precious bindings and seals revealing last wills, personal agreements, trading contracts, estate inventories, eyewitness testimonies of both daily life and critical events, and so much more.

All together it paints a detailed image of all aspects of the lives of people of all social classes, inhabiting or passing through Amsterdam, from the 17th to the 20th century. It shows the worldwide connections between families, traders, settlers and scholars. 

On a greater scale the archive reflects the evolution of Amsterdam from a modest town to a centre of trade and tolerance – a city that thrived as a result of its international orientation. Furthermore, it contains the first proofs of innovative ways to finance worldwide logistics, start-ups leading to the exploding Baltic trade in the early-modern period, but also estate inventories including paintings from Rembrandt to Ruysdael owned by the cosmopolitan and connected families that surpassed all national boundaries, next to testimonies of disasters on board of ships manned by international mixed crews, transporting slaves from Africa to the Americas.