Amersfoort

Amersfoort takes its name from a ford across the Amer, later called the Eem. The bishops of Utrecht established a court here to govern the Gelderse Vallei, and Bishop Henry of Vianden granted the town its rights in 1259. Cloth making and brewing supported its medieval prosperity. As the town expanded beyond its first walls, a second circuit was built between 1380 and about 1450; the Koppelpoort combined a land gate and a water gate in one structure.

Work began on the church and tower of Our Lady in 1444, raising a landmark above the town. The church was destroyed by an explosion in 1787, though its tower survived. In the seventeenth century Amersfoort acquired the nickname of the boulder town after townspeople hauled a huge stone from the heath on a wager. Tobacco cultivation brought prosperity in the eighteenth century, before the town began to decline around 1800.