The Rough Guide to the Netherlands by Rough Guides

Author:Rough Guides
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Travel, The Netherlands
Publisher: Apa Publications
Published: 2018-12-18T10:10:15+00:00

The Grote Kerk

Groenmarkt • Church April to late Oct Tues–Sat 10.30am–4.30pm, Sun 10am–4pm • Free • Tower April to late Oct Tues–Sat 10.30am–4.30pm, Sun noon–4pm, Nov to late March Sat 1–4pm • €1 • 078 614 4660, grotekerk-dordrecht.nl

The Gothic Grote Kerk is easily the most impressive building in Dordrecht, its truncated, fourteenth-century tower – topped with incongruous, seventeenth-century clocks – visible from all over town. One of the largest churches in the country, it was built to emphasize Dordrecht’s wealth and importance, but although the exterior is suitably imposing, the interior, stripped of its ornamentation by the Protestants long ago, is somewhat disappointing, though there is aesthetic consolation in the fancy pulpit, the occasional stained-glass window and, best of all, the intricately carved choir stalls with their folksy misericords. Climb the tower for a great view over the town and its surrounding waterways.

Voorstraat

Three canals parcel up Dordrecht’s old centre and the middle one runs beside Voorstraat, the main shopping street. Here, at the junction of Voorstraat and Visstraat, sitting on the Visbrug (bridge), is a lugubrious monument to the de Witt brothers, Johan and Cornelis, prominent Dutch Republicans who paid for their principles when they were torn to pieces by an Orangist mob in Den Haag in 1672. To the right of the Visbrug, Voorstraat wends its way northeast, a chaotic mixture of the old, the new and the restored, intersected by a series of tiny alleys that once led down to a set of jetties.

The Wijnhaven and the Groothoofdspoort

Leading off Voorstraat, the Wijnbrug spans the Wijnhaven, the harbour where the city’s merchants kept a beady eye on the import and export of wine, for which they had a state monopoly from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. The narrow channel at the entrance to the Wijnhaven is guarded by the Groothoofdspoort, formerly the main city gate, its grand brick and stone facade of 1618, complete with a bronze-green cupola and clock tower, staring down at the barges and boats that shuttle across the adjacent waterways.

Witch hunts and Oudewater

Over one million European women were burned or otherwise killed in the widespread witch hunts of the sixteenth century – and not just from quasi-religious fear and superstition: anonymous accusation was an easy way of removing a wife, at a time when there was no divorce. Underlying it all was a virulent misogyny and an accompanying desire to terrorize women into submission. There were three main methods for investigating accusations of witchcraft: in the first, trial by fire, the suspect had to walk barefoot over hot cinders or have a hot iron pressed into the back or hands. If the burns blistered, the accused was innocent, since witches were supposed to burn less easily than others; naturally, the (variable) temperature of the iron was crucial. Trial by water was still more hazardous: dropped into water, if you floated you were a witch, if you sank you were innocent – though those deemed innocent often drowned before being rescued. The third method, trial

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