THE NETHERLANDS : DELFT
The charming Delft was founded in the year
1075. This city with a population of 85.000 inhabitants is justifiably famous for the
blue-and-white pottery that Italian immigrant potters began making here
in the 1600s.
Delft is also closely associated with the Dutch Royal Family, as it is a
true "Oranjestad" (city of Orange-Nassau, the name of the Dutch
dynasty). In the city's Nieuwe Kerk (New church) is the Mausoleum of
William of Orange
(called The Silent - 1533-1584), the "founding father" of the Dutch
Nation. Delft was also home to one of Holland's greatest painters,
Johannes Vermeer
(1632-1675) whose "view over Delft" is one of the
masterpieces of Dutch painting.
The historic city center is of course the greatest attraction of Delft.
It is crammed with 17th and 18th Century houses, streets that overlook
canals, magnificent public buildings,
outdoor markets, and a surprising
number of museums for such a small town.
Some of
Delft's highlights
include: the "Grote Markt" (market) , the lively and historic
marketplace in the heart of town, the "Oude Kerk", a Gothic church that
was begun in the mid-1200s and completed in the 1500s, the "Nieuwe
Kerk", where you can climb the church tower for a great view over Delft,
the " Prinsenhof", a former convent where William of Orange was
assassinated in 1584.( today, the restored building houses Delft's
municipal art museum), the "Stadhuis", or city hall, which was
built in 1618-1620 around remnants of the old town hall (including a
13th Century prison tower), the Waag, once the town weighhouse and now a
café.
History of Delft
Before
the separation in 1585 of the Low Countries (or Netherlands) in a
prostestant North (now Holland) and a catholic South (now Belgium),
Delft was a typical town of this area of Europe. In the Middle-Ages,
Delft was a city of weavers and brewers, with numerous convents and
monasteries.
During the religious troubles of the low countries in the middle of the
16th century, Delft became more important when William of Orange, who
spearheaded the revolt against the Catholic Spanish Domination of the
Netherlands, choose the city as his military headquarters. He took up
residence in the Prinsenhof, a former monastery. It was in this same
building that he was killed in 1584 by Balthasar Gerard, a fanatical
catholic. William of Orange lies buried in a splendid late-Renaissance
mausoleum in Delft's "Nieuwe Kerk" (new church).
One
third of the city was destroyed in october 1654, when a gunpowder store
hidden in the garden of a convent exploded. During this catastrophy 200
people were killed.
The
important medieval harbour Delftshaven lies close to Delft. This is the
reason why the city becomes of the six seats of the "Oostindische
Compagnie - VOC" (the East-Indian Company) in 1631. This results in
frequent contacts with the orient, and the traders bring from their
travel a new product : Chinese porcelain. Delft starts to copy this
beautifully decorative art form and is now famous for its own version :
Blue Delftware.
After
the golden age of the 17th and the early18th centuries, Delft enters the
19th century with much less prosperity, since the trade, the delft-ware
potteries and the weaveries have mostly disappeared. In 1842, however,
King William I founds the "Royal Academy of Engineering" in Delft wich
would later develop into the world-famous "Technical University of
Delft".In 1876, the only remaining Delft-ware factory "De Porceleyne
Fles" is reanimated and remains , until today, the most important (and
certainly the oldest) epresentative of this typical Delft industry.
