Hofplein and the Van de Perre House

A large medieval church once stood on this square, the Old or St. Peter's Church, which was demolished in 1834. It's the second church on this walk to have disappeared, after the Westmonsterkerk on the Markt, and there's a reason for that. The nineteenth century was economically brutal for Middelburg, a city in the southwest Netherlands, with barely enough money to maintain anything, so tearing things down came cheaper than keeping them up.

The building you see now is the Van de Perre House, a city palace dating from 1765. The name is actually a bit odd when you know the story. Jacoba van den Brande inherited the property from an uncle, and Johan Adriaen van de Perre married her in 1760. Together they had it extensively rebuilt, and she paid for most of it. Even so, his name has been on the door for over two centuries.

The facade has a noticeable outward curve, and there's a practical reason for it. Carriages needed room to turn in front of the house, and a straight front wall would have left them too little space. So the curve was built to accommodate traffic coming to a church that has long since gone.

Behind the building today you'll find the Zeeuws Archief, a regional archive holding kilometres of documents. What's stored there, and what isn't, is a story in its own right.

Now comes the longest stretch of the walk, just over three hundred metres. We leave the square along the Wagenaarstraat and follow it all the way to the Balans, the small square in front of the Abdij. There we keep left and head east until we can turn into the Spanjaardstraat.