Face of a psychedelic serpent, painted in 1987 on the façade of what was then a squatters’ stronghold, in Spuistraat, Amsterdam, Netherlands. The property became world-famous as ‘het Slangenhuis’ (The Snake House), or simply ‘de Slang’ (The Snake) after the writhing serpent was painted on the front.
Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands: glaring eyes of the psychedelic serpent whose colourful coils have decorated the yellow and red, five-storey façade of Spuistraat 199, a former squatters’ stronghold, since the 1980s. Squatters moved into the unoccupied building in downtown Amsterdam in March 1983. It became world-famous as ‘het Slangenhuis’ (The Snake House), or simply ‘de Slang’ (The Snake) after the writhing serpent was painted on the front in 1987. In September 2006, when this image was captured, the building was occupied by a collective of artists, musicians and writers. They stayed until 2015, five years after the Dutch government had made squatting a criminal offence. Until 2010, squatting in an empty property was legal in the Netherlands if it had been unoccupied for at least a year, and if the squat was registered with the Dutch police. In the 1980s, the Amsterdam squatting community grew to around 20,000 people, but about 350 squats were cleared after the law changed in 2010, leaving only 23 still occupied by June 2012. The Snake House collective fought numerous legal battles to stay in the building, but its members were finally evicted in 2015. However, the serpent survives on the façade as one of Amsterdam’s most striking examples of urban art.
Size: 2000px × 3008px
Location: 'The Snake House', Spuistraat 199, Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
Keywords: 199, 2006, activists, alternative, amsterdam, anarchist, animal, art, artists, arts, blue, capture, collective, commune, criminalised, , de, dutch, eviction, eyes, glaring, graffiti, green, het, hippy, holland, house, illegal, image, kerr, legal, lifestyle, mural, musicians, netherlands, north, orange, outsider, painting, photograph, political, posterity, preserved, psychedelic, red, reptile, reptilian, serpent, slang, slangenhuis, snake, spray, spraycan, spuistraat, squat, squatter, squatters, squatting, staring, street, terence, urban, writers
