Amsterdam is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, located in North Holland. Amstelredamme was founded in 1173 at the site of a dam and bridge built over the River Amstel by flood survivors, and, in 1275, the village was exempted from paying bridge tolls to Count Floris V of Holland and then granted city status in 1306. By 1327, the village had become known as Amsterdam, and it flourished throughout the 14th century due to its trade with the Hanseatic League. In the 16th century, the imposition of new taxes and the persecution of Protestants by the Catholic Spanish rulers of the Habsburg Netherlands led to the Dutch Revolt, and Amsterdam became a major base for the Calvinist rebels under William the Silent, Prince of Orange. William enforced religious tolerance, allowing for Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, Huguenots from France, prosperous Calvinist merchants and printers from Flanders, and economic and religious refugees from the Spanish Low Countries to settle in Amsterdam. The influx of Flemish printers and the city's tradition of intellectual tolerance made Amsterdam a center for the European free press, and, during the 17th century, it became the wealthiest city in Western Europe as the center of a worldwide maritime trade network. In 1602, the Dutch East India Company became the world's first stock exchange company, and the Bank of Amsterdam opened in 1609. However, the Anglo-Dutch Wars and the Franco-Dutch War and Louis XIV of France's other wars with Holland took their toll on Amsterdam, which declined as a prosperous city. At the end of the 19th century, Amsterdam recovered and experienced a second golden age during which new museums, a railway station, and a concert hall were built, and the Industrial Revolution reached the city. New canals were built to give Amsterdam shorter connections to the North Sea and the Rhine, and the city was expanding and new suburbs being built by the time World War I broke out in 1914. On 10 May 1940, during World War II, Nazi Germany invaded and occupied the Netherlands, and they deported 100,000 Dutch Jews to Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust; 60,000 of them were from Amsterdam, and up to 85% of Amsterdam's Jews were deported and murdered. After the war, the suffering and damaged city was redesigned and redeveloped, and the Amsterdam Metro opened in 1977 and new roads were built. The streets were widened at the expense of local buildings (especially in the Jewish quarter), but 1975 protests prevented a major highway from being built. From the start of the early 21st century, Amsterdam became a major tourist destination, and it was famous for its decriminalized prostitution (formally defined as a legal profession in 1988) and cannabis (available for recreational use in "coffeeshops" since 1976), as well as for its many canals, for which it has been nicknamed "the Venice of the North". In 2019, Amsterdam had 872,680 residents, while its urban area had 1,380,872 residents.
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