Café In de Blaauwe Hand

Achter de Hoofdwacht 3, Nijmegen (beside the Grote Markt)

Grade B · Building datedTrading · checked Sept 2026

Café In de Blaauwe Hand claims 1542. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed: 1542
First record: none found
Building: c.1320

The building. A late-medieval building, in the national register's words, whose front was plastered and altered in the nineteenth century; a polychromed gable stone reads De Blaauwe Hand 1797, the shop-front is of the third quarter of the nineteenth century and the rear gable has a timber lower storey probably of the seventeenth. Local histories place the house at the corner of the city's cloth hall, first named in the accounts of 1382 and rebuilt between 1542 and 1545; the register does not mention the hall.

Pub website Directions

Historic interior
Terrace
Locals

How old is it, really?

How to read this ribbon

Hatched: 484 years claimed with no document found yet. Diamond: the standing building, dated from its fabric to about 1320.

The claim

Tucked behind Nijmegen's Grote Markt beside the medieval cloth hall, this brown café has served drinkers since 1542 by its own account. Its name recalls the indigo-stained hands of the cloth dyers who once worked next door. Low beams, dark wood and a small terrace under the old church tower make it one of the city's best-loved locals.

What the records show

The café occupies the right-hand corner of Nijmegen's cloth hall, which is first named in the city accounts of 1382 and was rebuilt between 1542 and 1545 to a design by Claes die Waele of Rhenen — the same 1542 the café gives as its founding date. The Digitale Huis pages of Regionaal Archief Nijmegen list the hall's later mixed uses, including the municipal bottelarij, say the cloth guild kept beer and wine in this cellar for its feasts, and treat the dyers drinking here as tradition. Erfgoed Gelderland asserts a hospitality function from 1542 and a feast attended by Charles V in 1546, but no licence or named tapster has been published; the earliest firm evidence for the house's name is the gable stone of 1797.

Dated evidence for Café In de Blaauwe Hand, earliest first
Year	What	Source
1542	Claimed founding	The pub
c.1320	Present building	Building fabric

What to look for inside

Hospitality use recorded since 1542
Name (1797) recalls blue-stained hands of cloth dyers
Emperor Charles V said to have feasted on the site in 1546

Visiting

Café In de Blaauwe Hand is in Nijmegen, Netherlands, at Achter de Hoofdwacht 3, Nijmegen (beside the Grote Markt). We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

indeblaauwehand.nl Directions in your maps app

Sources

Know something we don’t?Suggest a correctionLast checked Sept 2026

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The snug

What people remember about Café In de Blaauwe Hand

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