Abraham Storck painted the Dam facing north, with the recently completed Town Hall building on the left. Storck’s main subject was ships and imaginary harbour scenes. The Dam was an international meeting place, as we see from the men on the right wearing turbans. Various forms of transport can be seen. On the left we see a closed horse-drawn sledge transporting barrels; next to it is a man pushing a sledge. On the right is a ‘towing coach’, a Dutch seventeenth-century invention. This coach had no wheels and was towed over the cobblestones.