Welcome, fellow adventurers, to the Venlo City Tour! Tucked against the German border where the River Maas cuts through Limburg, Venlo has been a crossroads for traders, soldiers, spies and refugees since the Duke of Gelre granted it city rights in 1343. Get ready for a Renaissance town hall, a basilica that has been rebuilt from its ashes not once but twice, a merchant's house older than the Netherlands itself, and the quiet corners where this city's hardest chapter — and its stubborn recovery — are still written into the streets. Few Dutch cities paid as high a price in the Second World War as Venlo. On 9 November 1939, German agents staged the notorious 'Venlo Incident' right at the edge of town, kidnapping two British intelligence officers in a stunt Hitler later used to justify invading the neutral Netherlands. Five years later, between October and November 1944, thirteen Allied bombing raids aimed at the Maas bridges killed 333 residents and gutted whole quarters of the old center, before American tanks finally rolled in to liberate the city on 1 March 1945. What you'll walk through today isn't really a city that escaped the war — it's a city that was knocked down and quietly, doggedly put itself back together. Answer each stop's question correctly to earn a letter, collect all of them, and see if you can spell out exactly what Venlo did.

A Border City Reborn on the Maas

Venlo City Tour

9 stops · 170 min · 3.2 km

€ 14,99€ 9,99

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