Welcome, fellow adventurers, to the Middelburg City Tour! As the capital of Zeeland, Middelburg grew rich on trade centuries before the VOC ever existed, and by 1602 its merchants were powerful enough to secure their own chamber, the Kamer Zeeland, inside the brand-new United East India Company — the second-largest of the six VOC chambers after Amsterdam. Behind its ring of canals you'll find one of the most richly decorated Gothic town halls in the entire Netherlands, a 900-year-old abbey that quietly became the seat of an entire province's government, and narrow gated lanes still lined with the pointed-gable warehouses where spices, silk, and coopers' barrels once changed hands. Much of what you'll see today is, in fact, a careful reconstruction. On 17 May 1940, German bombs and the fires that followed gutted almost the entire historic center — the Stadhuis, the Abbey complex, and the Lange Jan tower all burned. What you're walking through now is the result of decades of painstaking postwar restoration, rebuilt stone by stone to look exactly as it did in Middelburg's golden trading age. Collect a letter at several stops along the way, and by the end of the walk you'll have spelled out the very word that once linked this city's town hall, its abbey, and its trading company all at once.

Gothic Splendor & the VOC's Golden Chamber

Middelburg City Tour

9 stops · 150 min · 2.6 km

€ 14,99€ 9,99

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