In Celebration Of Amsterdam's Live Sex Show

Not all of the lights in Amsterdam’s Red Light District are red. Midway down the Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal is one of the quarter’s most eye catching facades, emblazoned with a giant pink neon elephant who’s sporting a tie with Amsterdam’s triple X coat of arms and cheekily blowing a little red heart out of his trunk. The iconic symbol advertises the location of the Casa Rosso, the oldest live sex theater in the Amsterdam, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

- Lily Heise

The sex trade in De Wallen, the official Dutch name of the district, dates as far back as the 13th century. Sex work itself was legalized in The Netherlands in 1811, much to the pleasure of the then occupying Napoleonic troops who spent a great deal of their leisure time visiting the parlors lining the narrow alleyways leading off the canals. Not much had changed in the area until 1968, a year of rebellion and revolutions, including the sexual revolution. This also came with the proliferation of pornographic films and erotic cinemas. However, instead of opening a movie house, the founder of the Casa Rosso, Maurits de Vries, took another approach.

“Our product is unique, we were the first in the world to have a live sex show performed in a theater venue,” Jan Otten, the Casa Rosso’s current owner, tells me as we sit in the empty pre-show theater. Otten started working at the Casa Rosso as a doorman 43 years ago and gradually climbed the ranks to become the manager before buying the business in 1997.

“At the time it opened, there were only the girls in the window in the Red Light District,” describes Otten. “In the original bar there were girls doing striptease. This was allowed, live sex was not. But since [de Vries] owned the whole building, he got around this by converting the third floor into a small theater. When the show was about to start, they closed the door making it a private venue, therefore the bar rules did not apply.” It’s hard to conjure up that clandestine space from within today’s incarnation of the Casa Rosso. Redecorated in 2016, the classy venue now has new red velour theater seats, a stage with a raisable revolving platform and high-tech illuminated glass poles and a group of seductively frolicking nude sculptures overhead.