Deventer Netherlands Overijssel
Frequently Asked Questions
Along the IJssel, a few minutes' walk from the historic centre. Cross the dyke and you change century.
The great market square, dating back to the twelfth century, where Hanseatic merchants weighed their grain, butter and cloth. Café terraces have replaced the carts, but market days restore its original purpose.
The former public weigh house with its ornate facade, on the Brink, recalling the days when the city's prosperity was measured in barrels.
The hill quarter behind the Brink, whose cobbled lanes climb towards the Bergkerk, a church consecrated in 1206. Its restored merchant houses form one of the best-preserved medieval ensembles in the Netherlands.
No, people genuinely live there, and their bicycles propped against the facades make the point. You wander without a plan, looking up at the carved facade stones that once served as addresses.
A honey gingerbread whose recipe has been handed down here for centuries. Shops in the centre sell it in every form, and it makes an excellent souvenir to take back aboard.
Yes, deeply. It has antiquarian bookshops, second-hand dealers and one of Europe's largest book markets, which takes over the quays each summer.
To the late Middle Ages: it was a centre of printing and scholarship, its learned library founded in the sixteenth century is among the oldest in the Netherlands, and Erasmus himself studied in its schools.
The tower of the Lebuinuskerk, the church dedicated to the missionary who founded the city, a constant point of reference above the rooftops.
Head for the Brink and the Waag, climb into the Bergkwartier as far as the Bergkerk, taste the gingerbread in a shop in the centre, then walk back along the riverside quays.
