Twelve Low Countries Towns from the Frisian Coast to Hainaut

Appingedam is first mentioned in a document of 1224, a town established by shipmasters, tradesmen and craftsmen. The site was inhabited for over a thousand years before that, and the East-West Canal known as the Diep still shapes the downtown layout.

Bolsward is first mentioned in AD 725, joined the Hanseatic League in 1422 and received city rights from Philip the Good in 1455. It is one of the eleven Frisian towns linked by the Elfstedentocht skating marathon.

Hindeloopen received city rights in 1225 and joined the Hanseatic League in 1368. Its shippers traded across the North and Baltic seas, leaving it a distinctive local language, costume and painted architecture, though only about 875 people lived there in 2017.

Elburg was rebuilt between 1392 and 1396 with a moat, a city wall and a gridiron street plan. After the 1932 closure of the Zuiderzee ended much of its fishing economy, it turned toward tourism from 1956, and its largely intact medieval center now draws more than 30,000 visitors a year.

Muiden stands at the mouth of the Vecht river and was first recorded in 953, when Otto I granted the settlement to the Cathedral of Saint Martin in Utrecht. Count Floris V built the medieval castle Muiderslot at the river mouth soon after the town received city rights.

Naarden received city rights in 1300, the only town in the Gooi to hold them. Spanish soldiers massacred roughly 700 inhabitants there in 1572, and its star-shaped fortifications are part of the restored Defense Line of Amsterdam.

Bergen op Zoom received its town charter around 1212 and became a margraviate in 1559. It was called the Virgin for withstanding sieges in 1588 and 1622, until a French army breached its defenses in 1747, and it still holds the Hotel de Draak, dated to 1397.

The capital of North Brabant received city rights in 1184 or 1185 from Godfrey III. Surrounded by marshes in the Eighty Years War, it earned the nickname Moerasdraak, the swamp dragon, and it lies on four rivers: the Maas, the Aa, the Dommel and the Dieze.

Dendermonde, chartered in 1233, sits where the Dender meets the Scheldt and grew on the medieval cloth trade. It holds two UNESCO World Heritage listings, its beguinage and its city hall and belfry, and stages the Ros Beiaard procession once a decade.

Maastricht lies on both banks of the Meuse where the Jeker joins it, with a settlement dated to about 50 AD. As capital of Limburg beside the Belgian border, it is part of the Meuse-Rhine Euroregion of about 3.9 million people that includes Aachen, Liege and Hasselt.

Tongeren is described as the oldest town in Belgium and its only Roman administrative capital. Known in Roman times as Atuatuca Tungrorum, it was the center of the Civitas Tungrorum, home of the Tungri people.

Mons, capital of Hainaut, was founded as a fortified settlement in the 12th century by Count Baldwin IV. Its fortifications came down in the 1860s, coal mining made it a center of heavy industry, and in August 1914 it saw a major early engagement of the First World War.