Everyone has an opinion about where Felicia Anna works. For the last nine years, the 33-year-old Romanian sex worker has attracted clients by standing in the glowing windows of the world’s most famous red light district. Sipping coffee outside a cafe on one of Amsterdam’s cobbled, canal-side streets, she says the area’s reputation means it attracts far more controversy than legal prostitution does in other areas. “We’re always in the public eye, literally” she says, laughing.
Named “De Wallen” (The Walls) in Dutch for its position inside the old city walls, the red light district’s medieval buildings have been a hub for sex workers since the 15th century—long before the Netherlands legalized brothels and began regulating and taxing prostitution in October 2000. Today, escort services and sex clubs make up a significant part of Amsterdam’s sex work sector. But De Wallen’s window brothels—popularized in the 1960s as authorities grew more tolerant of women opening their curtains to attract clients—remain iconic: the literal manifestation of the clear-eyed Dutch approach to activities that other countries would rather sweep under the rug.
- Time
