A new site, Anne in the Neighborhood,
explores the places Anne knew (and places in Amsterdam dealing with Anne's
memory).
There are a lot of pictures in the "Plekken om bij stil te staan" section:
an exploration of the neighborhood, past and (mostly) present. Be sure
to look for a link at the bottom of each page, in case there are
more pictures (there usually aren't). They have many pictures of their
apartment (Merwedeplein 37-II) but you may have to keep reloading:
the slideshow stalls.
(The apartment has been restored to period authenticity. Toward the
bottom of my apt page is a schematic
of the apartment's likely layout.)
Elsewhere,
there are also quite a few pictures of the apartment, restored,
but some new ones are at this new site, like the doorbell.
On July 5th, 1942, the door bell rang. It was Anne's
new beau. She wrote in her diary, "There goes the doorbell, Hello's
here, I'll stop, yours, Anne." They talked briefly: he was coming back.
But at 3p.m. the bell rang again. Anne didn't hear it, someone else
got it. It was the delivery of Margot's call up notice (from the Nazis)!
They were careful opening the door for the rest of the night. They
frantically packed and wondered about their futures. "I was dog-tired and
although I knew it would be my last night in my own bed, I fell asleep
immediately... At 7:30 the door closed behind us, Moortje, my little
cat, was the only creature to whom I said farewell. She would
have a good home with the neighbors." (Anne's diary, on the 8th)
This new site is unfortunately only available in Dutch.
Like me, you may need to use an online translator. Babelfish
translations are free, sometimes terrible, translations.
The "Een herinnering aan toen"
link is the memories of her friend, Hanneli. (It looks
fresh, not just lifted from her memoirs.)
The "Anne's betekenis nu"
link has a series of interviews with people who own or work in
the places Anne knew. Among them are her Montessori school's principal (directeur),
the sculptor of the neighborhood sculpture of Anne, the owner
of the "Oasis" (Oase) snack shop she and her friends used to
eat ice cream at, plus poems by the neighborhood's current children.