AFAS Live: Music venue in ArenAPoort, Amsterdam

★★★★★ 4.1

AFAS Live is a concert hall in Amsterdam Zuidoost, on the Johan Cruijff Boulevard across from the Johan Cruijff ArenA, designed from the start for amplified music. The main room, the Black Box, holds up to 6,000 people and has no pillars between the audience and the stage, so you are here for big touring acts seen and heard properly. The hall opened in 2001 as the Heineken Music Hall, to a design by Frits van Dongen of Architekten Cie, and took its current name on 1 January 2017 after its sponsor AFAS Software. It is part of Live Nation. Most nights are international pop and rock tours or Dutch headliners, with comedy and darts in the mix. Apart from the Black Box there is a foyer, VIP boxes and a Sky Lounge. There are no regular opening hours: doors open per show, and tickets are sold by each event's organiser rather than by the venue. Bars and the foyer food stand are cashless. Bags larger than A4 are not allowed in and do not fit the lockers inside, so leave them at home or at a nearby locker point. The venue asks visitors to come by public transport. Hall doors usually open around 18:30, but times differ per show, so check the agenda. Organisers try to finish concerts around 23:00 so people can still get home by public transport. At shows with free seating you choose between the floor, the pull-out stand with just over 700 seats and the balcony with about 650, and those seats cannot be reserved. The advised age is 16, with under-16s advised to come with someone over 18, while dance events and night parties are often 18+. After nearly every regular concert Dutch talent plays an aftershow on the Beatbox Talent Stage on the first floor, which the lift also reaches. The nearest station is Bijlmer ArenA, a short walk away. There is no guarded bike park, but there are racks in the ArenAPoort, and the closest car parks are P3, P4/5 and P6.