Wijk bij Duurstede Netherlands Utrecht
25
Cruises availables
At departure or passage at this port
Frequently Asked Questions
Along the dyke, a few minutes from the centre. This is where the Rhine changes its name: one branch runs towards Utrecht as the Kromme Rijn, the other continues seaward as the Lek.
The great trading settlement that stood here in Charlemagne's time, one of the most important on the continent. Wooden quays stretched for kilometres, handling Rhenish wine, millstones, cloth and coin. Norse ships raided it in the ninth century, and the river, shifting its bed, finished it off.
Brooches, silver coins and models that give substance to the vanished city. Archaeologists have been digging this ground — among the richest in the Netherlands — for generations. You leave the museum looking at the streets differently.
The thirteenth-century brick keep stands guard at the edge of the centre, in an English-style park with moats and mature trees. The main tower, among the oldest of its kind in the Netherlands, is mirrored in still water — ten minutes' walk from the main square.
The Rijn en Lek mill stands directly on a former town gate, a very rare arrangement in the Netherlands: carts once passed beneath its sails. From the nearby dyke, the view combines water, roofs and steeple in a panorama painters still favour.
Yes, around 1670, in one of the most famous paintings of the Dutch Golden Age, now hanging in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The mill he painted is gone, but its successor plays the same role in the landscape.
The large church of St John the Baptist, whose massive tower was never finished for lack of funds, the café-lined market square, and the alleys where hollyhocks grow between the cobbles. All of it takes about an hour.
Yes, on Saturdays. The cheese and herring stalls are a reminder that the merchant tradition never entirely left this place, a thousand years after Dorestad.
Stroll the banks: anglers under the willows, terns diving into the current, a cable ferry crossing the Lek as it has for generations. At the nearby locks, barge convoys queue up — this quiet bend remains one of the busiest nautical crossroads in the country.
A coffee and a slice of appeltaart on a terrace on the market square. The Dutch have a word for this fuss-free conviviality, gezelligheid, and squares like this define it better than any dictionary.
