Zwolle

Zwolle stands on a low rise between the IJssel, the Vecht, the Aa and the Zwarte Water, the one spot that stayed dry when the rivers flooded. The bishop of Utrecht gave it town rights in 1230, and it joined the Hanseatic League in 1294. In 1324 the robber knight Zweder van Voorst set the town on fire, and only nine stone buildings, among them the chapel and refectory of the Bethlehem convent, survived; Zwolle was rebuilt towards the west, and the streets of the old eastern half still wind while the western ones run straight.

Zwolle's golden age was the fifteenth century. It rejoined the Hanse in 1407, won a staple right from the bishop of Utrecht in 1438, and shared a mint with Deventer and Kampen. The Devotio Moderna spread across Europe partly from here: Thomas à Kempis lived at the Agnietenberg convent near the town and died there in 1471. In 1416 the bishop crushed the guilds' hold on the town government in the Night of Saint Lucy.

A toll dispute with Kampen over ships using the Zwarte Water led Zwolle in 1520 to accept Charles of Guelders as its lord, which earned its people the nickname Blauwvingers. The town went over to the Dutch revolt in 1572, and on 15 June 1580, after the stadtholder defected to Spain, the Calvinist Lubert Ulger defeated Catholics and Spanish soldiers in the Diezerstraat.