Kampen

Kampen was one of the richest towns in the Low Countries in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, trading through the IJssel mouth to the Baltic before Amsterdam took the business, and the waterfront still shows it: a long front of gabled houses along the river, three surviving medieval town gates - the Koornmarktspoort, Broederpoort and Cellebroederspoort - the Nieuwe Toren with a carillon, and the Gothic Bovenkerk with a choir attributed to the Rhineland mason Rutger van Keulen. From the nineteenth century the town made cigars on a large scale and the trade lasted into the twentieth, with a tobacco museum recording it. Kampen also carries a set of self-deprecating folk stories, the Kamper uien, in which the townspeople do absurd things - hauling a cow onto the town wall to graze is the standard one - and a statue commemorates it.

History

There were already wooden buildings on the site by 1150, though the name Kampen first appears in 1277. The town has had city rights since 1236, and its place on the trade route between the Zuiderzee and the Rhine made it one of the most prosperous trading towns of the region (Wikipedia, Kampen, Overijssel).

Highlights

• Three medieval gates - Koornmarktspoort, Broederpoort and Cellebroederspoort standing.
• A gabled river front - the Hanseatic waterfront along the IJssel.
• A cigar-making past - the nineteenth-century trade recorded in a museum.
• The Kamper uien - the town's own absurd folk stories, with a statue for the cow.

When to go

April to October. A day.

Things to know

Museums close on Mondays. The tower climb is seasonal. The town is small and quiet in the evening. The IJsselkogge, the medieval ship raised nearby, is being conserved and display is intermittent.

Nearby

Zwolle is east; the IJsselmeer and Flevoland are west.

Key facts