North Brabant

North Brabant is a province in the south of the Netherlands whose capital is 's-Hertogenbosch. It has about 2.5 million inhabitants, the third largest provincial population in the country, and with just over five thousand square kilometres it is the second largest province by area, after Gelderland to its north. To the south lie the Belgian provinces of Antwerp and Limburg, to the west Zeeland and South Holland, and to the east Dutch Limburg. Eindhoven, with more than 248,000 residents, is its largest city. The province is strongly urbanised, a pattern described as the Brabant city row, and it is rooted in the old Duchy of Brabant, which gives it its own dialects and traditions such as carnival and the shooting guilds. After the Peace of Munster in 1648 the conquered northern part passed to the Dutch Republic as Staats-Brabant.