It's 100 feet high, with 5,000 pipes and a sound that impressed both Handel and Mozart. The interior of the 16th-century church is dominated by Holland's greatest pipe organ. Sit and gaze at the church, appreciating the same scene that Golden Age Dutch artists captured in oil paintings you'll see in Dutch museums. Rising above the square is the impressive Grote Kerk (Great Church), one of the best-known landmarks in the Netherlands. The Dutch, rather than arrest the man, simply moved the bench. The town drunk used to hang out on the bench in front of the Town Hall, where he'd expose himself to newlyweds coming down the stairs. While most of medieval Europe was ruled by kings, dukes, and barons, Haarlem has been largely self-governing since 1425. (And the Chinese beat them both by several centuries.)Īlso on Haarlem's market square is the Town Hall, the site of the city's government since about 1100 (when William the Conqueror ruled England). In the statue, Coster holds up a block of movable type and points to himself, saying: "I made this." How much Coster did is uncertain, but Gutenberg trumped him by building a printing press, casting type in metal, and pounding out the Bible. He got the idea of making movable type out of wood (and later he may have tried using lead). Forty years before Gutenberg "invented" the first printing press, this man carved the letter "A" out of wood, dropped it into some wet sand and saw the imprint it left. 1370–1440), the man Haarlemmers credit with creating modern printing techniques. This is a great place to build a picnic with Haarlem finger foods: raw herring, local cheese (Gouda and Edam), a frikandel (little corn-dog sausage), French fries with mayonnaise, stroopwafels (waffles with syrup), poffertjes (little sugar doughnuts), or one of many different international foods (falafel, shoarma, Indonesian). But today it's a people zone, with market stalls filling the square on market days and café tables on other days. Just a few years ago, trolleys ran through the square and cars were parked everywhere. Sit and gaze at the church, appreciating essentially the same scene that Dutch artists captured centuries ago in oil paintings that now hang in museums. To enjoy a coffee or beer here, simmering in Dutch good living, is a quintessential European experience. Grote Markt (Market Square), where 10 streets converge, is the town's delightful centerpiece.as it has been for 700 years. Make yourself at home - buy some flowers to brighten your hotel room. For centuries, Haarlem has been a market town, buzzing with shoppers heading home with fresh bouquets.Įnjoy the market on Monday (clothing) or Saturday (general), when the square bustles like a Brueghel painting with cheese, fish, flowers, and families. A Golden Age kind of town, friendly Haarlem is quintessentially Dutch, offering small-town warmth and quick access to nearby Amsterdam.īustling Haarlem gave America's Harlem its name back when New York was "New Amsterdam," a Dutch colony.
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