Time in Amsterdam

From 1909 the Netherlands kept its own legal time, Amsterdam Time, based on the Westertoren church tower and set at 19 minutes 32.13 seconds ahead of Greenwich. In 1937 it was rounded to exactly 20 minutes ahead, making the Dutch one of the last countries with a non-hour offset in Europe. When German forces occupied the country in May 1940 they moved the clocks to Berlin time, and after the war the Netherlands kept Central European Time.

Daylight saving returned in 1977 and now follows the European Union calendar. Because Amsterdam lies at 4.9° east, the clock runs roughly 40 minutes ahead of the sun in winter and 1 hour 40 minutes ahead in summer, so solar noon in July is around 1:45 PM.

At 52.4° north, Amsterdam's longest day has sunrise around 5:20 AM and sunset after 10:00 PM, nearly 16 hours 50 minutes of daylight. In late December the sun rises near 8:50 AM and sets around 4:30 PM, a day of about 7 hours 40 minutes. The late winter sunrise comes from sitting near the western edge of the CET zone.

Amsterdam claims the world's oldest stock exchange, where Dutch East India Company shares traded from 1602. Today Euronext Amsterdam trades from 9:00 to 17:30. London is one hour behind all year, and New York six hours behind for most of the year, so the overlap with Wall Street runs from 15:30 to 17:30 in Amsterdam. The CET to EST table lists every hour, including the weeks when the gap drops to five.