Welcome, fellow adventurers, to the Enschede City Tour! Get ready to explore the largest city of Twente the way its own textile barons and rebuilding crews once did — on foot, discovering how a place can burn down, blow up, and still find the will to rebuild itself as something even better. Along the way you'll meet the van Heek family, whose cotton fortunes shaped half the landmarks on this route, and you'll walk through a neighbourhood that didn't exist twenty-five years ago because the one before it was destroyed in a single afternoon. Enschede's history reads like that of a city that refuses to stay down. On 7 May 1862, a catastrophic fire tore through the wooden inner city, destroying 633 houses and eight factories and leaving three-quarters of the population homeless — yet within two years the Grote Kerk had risen again, and the modern textile mills that replaced the old ones made Enschede the richest cotton-manufacturing town in the country. Then, on 13 May 2000, disaster struck again: an explosion at a fireworks depot in the Roombeek district killed 23 people and flattened an entire neighbourhood. Once more, the city rebuilt — this time inviting residents, architects and artists to design a new Roombeek together. Answer a question at each stop to earn a letter, and see if you can spell out exactly what it is that keeps this city standing.

Fire, Fabric & Resilience

Enschede City Tour

9 stops · 150 min · 4.8 km

€ 14,99€ 9,99

Instant access after payment — you'll get a code by email and on screen to unlock the tour.