Leeuwarden

Leeuwarden grew beside the Middelzee, an inlet that once carried maritime trade into the heart of Friesland before silting up in the thirteenth century. The settlement acquired city privileges in 1435. Its oldest church, the Grote or Jacobijnerkerk, stood above a town whose history was shaped by the rival Frisian factions of the Vetkopers and Schieringers.

Between 1481 and 1494 Leeuwarden strengthened its defences with bastions and a moat. It became the seat of the Frisian stadtholders, whose residence was the Stadhouderlijk Hof. A provincial mint operated in the town from 1580 to 1752, striking gold, silver and copper coins. Jewish inhabitants established a community in the seventeenth century, receiving permission to found a burial ground in 1670. In the early nineteenth century the old fortifications were dismantled.