How trade turned Middelburg into one of the most important cities in the Netherlands
Middelburg may not be the largest city in the Netherlands, but it does boast well over twelve hundred listed monuments. During this hour-and-a-half walking tour, we pass the most famous among them — while focusing especially on what no longer stands. A church that disappeared beneath the Market Square, a prison that became a garden, and a street that was never the same after one night in May 1940. Along the way, you'll discover where the telescope was invented and why the Oostkerk was paid for with beer. Twelve stops, nearly three kilometres, and a city you only truly understand once you know what has been lost.
The square only came into existence after a church was demolished to make way for it.
A spectacle maker invented the telescope right here. He never got the patent.
The town prison once stood behind this alley, complete with a torture chamber and torture chair.
Hidden in the facades of this shopping street, an eagle rises from the flames.
The city's first wealth came from wine, which was required by law to dock here.
Many facades carry a small stone with an eagle rising from the flames and the year 1940 beneath it.
Twelve small houses, deliberately built low. In 1994, the council wanted to demolish them.
The most powerful abbey in Zeeland, with a tower that burned down three times.
A city palace with the wrong name, standing where a vanished church once was.
A warehouse complex once stood behind the courthouse, and before that, a house full of forced labour.
In 1756, a letter arrived here ordering people by the unit.
This is where the innkeepers lived who supplied crews to the ships.
The date on this facade probably doesn't tell the whole story, and the same goes for plenty of other buildings.
Fifty buildings torn down to make room for cars. Then someone installed radioactive art in their place.
The oldest harbour area of the city, created by damming a creek.
An entire industry that went from twelve mills to zero in thirty years.
In 1460, the city council officially designated this street as the red-light district.
Named after a boat that kept the harbour from silting up.
Without a well-made barrel, no cargo made it across the ocean in one piece.
Ships set sail from these quays that officially weren't allowed to sail at all.
This is where the ships were built, with an orlop deck just a metre forty high.
A pijp was a wine barrel, and the factory that stood here branded its casks with an Arab on horseback.
Four warehouses named after beasts of burden, standing beside a canal the town dug for itself.
Two porters, a wine barrel, and a house name that explains itself.
Twenty years of construction, funded by beer and wine, and a skeleton carved above the door.
Two houses two hundred metres apart, with the far ends of the triangular trade written on their facades.
