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.

What you actually see

• 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.

Honest expectations

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.