Like so many other backpackers arriving in Amsterdam, that obligatory layover for anyone “doing” Europe, I came to the city knowing next to nothing about it. Besides a visit to the coffee shops rife with reefer and the sobering Anne Frank house—a special kind of hell exists for those who combine the two activities—just what is there to do?

The Netherlands’ capital attracts droves of a particular type of traveller: the kind of person who has no qualms about wearing a rasta hat with mock dreadlocks or whose idea of museum-hopping includes Madame Tussauds. These are the sort of people drawn to the city’s red-light district like moths to a flame, and the question on their minds is not what, but rather who, is there to do?

Enter the Prostitution Information Centre, a resource for everything and anything to do with Amsterdam’s infamous neighbourhood. By giving advice and referrals, the PIC eschews the moral high ground for a sort of middle ground. It provides information to all, from the tourist seeking a recommendation for the best brothel to the anti-prostitution activist studying the regulation and repercussions of sex work in the Netherlands.

Since its founding in 1994 by former prostitute Mariska Majoor, the centre has organized activities to support and promote sex-workers’ rights, such as neighbourhood open houses and the unveiling of a statue to honour prostitutes worldwide. The centre welcomes over 20,000 people a year, and its guided tours—led by women who live, work, and play in the neighbourhood—seemed the best way to learn about the area.

My tour of de Wallen, Amsterdam’s largest red-light district (there are three), begins inside the PIC, a boudoir of a boutique that doubles as a small library. Over the course of an hour, we walk de Wallen, cross a network of canals, and stray in and out of Zeedijk, previously a drug dealer–dominated district that’s now reincarnated as Chinatown, home to one of Europe’s largest Buddhist temples.

We pass by rows of rented rooms. In keeping with the neighbourhood’s name, all keep a red-light vigil—some subtle, with just a bright fluorescent bulb beaming above the entrance, others glowing like super-sized paper lanterns. Known colloquially as window brothels, they more often than not feature entire doors of pane glass. Behind them, women—done up and dressed down—deliver the equivalent of a peep show to passers-by.

Berna, our tour leader, who unlike most PIC staff members is not a current or former prostitute, discourages us from staring and snapping photos, an unwritten rule of the neighbourhood. But she does encourage us to ask lots of questions. While this makes the tour feel less like a lecture, it also leaves it vulnerable to hijackings by participants with outrageous objections. After learning how the neighbourhood is divided into niches by nationality, for instance, the patriarch of one family is particularly incredulous at the idea of paying the same rate for women of different ethnicities.

Unfazed, our guide forges on, pausing occasionally to explain the origins of the oldest profession in the world, and to give some background on the neighbourhood. Despite its debatably unsavoury nature, de Wallen is one of the most historic parts of Amsterdam. In addition to the gothic Oude Kerk, a church that’s been at the centre of community life since the Dam was a fishing village in the 14th century, it has some of the oldest buildings in the city, including one with its original wooden exterior still intact. The seedy brothels seem a stark contrast to the charming canal houses crowned with gables like fabulous fondant wedding cakes. But somehow it works: our guide tells us that real estate in this area is some of the most coveted and expensive in the city—so much so that the upper floors above brothels are used as apartments.

Next, she points out the closed-circuit TV cameras mounted high up on street corners. Brothels are not similarly big-brothered, she explains, but each woman’s room comes equipped with a panic button linked into a central security system.

Police interaction with prostitutes is kept professional, our guide says. As long as the working girls have a European Union passport and are at least 18 years old, they’re free to earn a living legally throughout the Netherlands. According to literature published by the centre, streetwalking—formerly favoured by those not wanting to shell out up to €150 ($210) per shift to a landlord for a room—hasn’t been allowed in Amsterdam since 2003, with the police citing complications in ensuring the necessary security. But when charging an average flat fee of €50 ($70) for 15 minutes, making rent isn’t the major concern; prostitutes are now expected to pay tax on their earnings.

Besides this brief mention of streetwalking, Berna barely acknowledges what many would point to as the violence, exploitation, and coercion inherent to the sex industry, and instead focuses on how the profession and neighbourhood have been rehabilitated. Indeed, the way she talks about de Wallen makes me feel like I’m at an intervention she’s staging for the benefit of tourists: we’re all friends here. There is no judgment. This is a safe place.

Whether or not the neighbourhood itself needs an intervention depends on who you ask. The PIC adopts the position that legalization prevents prostitutes from working in unsafe conditions. But in 2007, the municipal government admitted that prostitution was attracting organized crime and trafficking to the area, and later began shutting down brothels as part of its Coalition Project 1012 to clean up the area—always being careful not to jeopardize de Wallen’s reputation for tolerance and freedom.

It’s clear that the neighbourhood’s open-minded, laid-back attitude is part of the attraction for visitors and locals alike. When our tour is interrupted by an impromptu soccer game, Berna uses it as an example of the neighbourhood’s characteristic carefree ways and spirit of camaraderie. To me, it just seems like inevitable behaviour when you pool together a bunch of drunken tourists in the afternoon. I decline to follow through on her advice to return when the sun goes down and the red light really shines. I already visited the night before and it was not up my alley—hordes of men on the prowl, under the dreaded rasta hats, through narrow walkways. But to each his own, and for the women of de Wallen, a room of one’s own, it seems, is better than none at all.

ACCESS: The Prostitution Information Centre is located just off of Amsterdam’s Ouderkerksplein square at 3 Enge Kerksteeg.