Welcome, fellow adventurers, to the Leeuwarden City Tour! Grab your walking shoes and get ready to explore the proud capital of Friesland — a city of leaning towers, runaway spies, and speed skates. In 2018 Leeuwarden traded its quiet provincial reputation for the spotlight as European Capital of Culture, but its real story stretches back nearly a thousand years, to a cluster of man-made mounds raised above the flooding tides of the Middelzee. Those mounds grew into a compact, canal-laced old town where Frisian stadtholders once ruled from their own court, a butter market once made merchants rich, and a runaway dancer named Margaretha Zelle was born under a very different name: Mata Hari. Nowhere captures Leeuwarden's stubborn, tilted relationship with ambition quite like the Oldehove, the unfinished church tower where we begin — a 16th-century monument to civic pride that quite literally couldn't stay standing straight. From there we'll wind past a royal burial vault, a Renaissance law court, a garden that once hosted the finish line of the legendary Elfstedentocht ice-skating tour, and the bronze footsteps of the city's most notorious daughter. Answer each stop's question correctly and you'll earn a letter — collect all nine, and you'll be able to spell out exactly what this whole province, and this whole tour, is named for. Fryslân awaits — good luck!

Leaning Towers, Lost Spies & the Ice of Fryslân

Leeuwarden City Tour

9 stops · 160 min · 3.1 km

€ 14,99€ 9,99

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