Sloten

Sloten - Sleat in Frisian - has about seven hundred inhabitants and city rights from 1426, which makes it one of the smallest places in the Netherlands entitled to call itself a city and one of the eleven of the Elfstedentocht. It is a single canal with a street either side, running between two water gates, inside a complete bastioned moat that is walked in about twenty minutes. Everything is small: the town hall, the church, the eighteenth-century houses, the corn mill on the rampart. It sits in the middle of the south-west Frisian lakes, so the canal through it is a through-route for boats and the traffic in summer is the main event - vessels passing between the lake systems go straight through the centre of town, a few metres from the houses. Out of season almost nothing is open.

History

Sloten began in the 13th century as a settlement by the stins, the fortified house, of the Van Harinxma thoe Slooten family, and is first recorded with city rights in a charter of 30 August 1426. It stood where the waterway from Sneek to the Zuiderzee crossed the road from Germany to Stavoren, so tolls could be levied here, and its rampart and moat, laid out by the fortress builder Menno van Coehoorn, survive almost complete (Wikipedia, Sloten, Friesland).

Highlights

• Seven hundred people with city rights - held since 1426, one of the smallest in the country.
• One canal between two water gates - the whole town along a single waterway.
• A complete moat - the bastioned circuit walked in about twenty minutes.
• Boats through the middle - lake traffic passing a few metres from the houses.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Practical notes

It is genuinely tiny - an hour or two. Out of season nearly everything closes. Busy with boaters in July and August. Parking is outside the moat.

Nearby

Sneek is north-east; Gaasterland and the IJsselmeer are west.

Key facts