West Friesland (region)

West Friesland, also known as West Frisia and called West-Friesland or Westfriesland in Dutch, is a cultural region in the northwest of the Netherlands, within the province of North Holland. Its largest city is Hoorn. The region covers about 781.8 square kilometres in total, of which roughly 507 square kilometres is land, and had about 413,000 inhabitants in 2024. Its people are called West Frisians and the local speech is West Frisian Dutch. A religion survey covering 2010 to 2014 recorded 56.9 percent of residents with no religion, 27.9 percent Catholic and 7.8 percent Protestant. The region has its own flag and coat of arms, and historical maps show West Friesland as it was in the seventeenth century.