Jaap van 't Veen's photos

The double moated Kasteel Arcen Arcen Castle was built in the 17th century by order of the Dukes of Gelre. The current castle was built on the remains of a previous castle, which in turn was built on the remains of the very first castle ‘Huys den Kamp’. The current castle was built in the baroque period. Baroque features include lavish forms and expressions of power and the pursuit of grandeur. The building lost its symmetry due to a fire in the 19th century, in which the left wing was lost. This part of the building was never rebuilt. The castle's last occupant, Professor Deusser left the castle in 1931. The rooms of the ground floor are furnished in historical style and give an impression to earlier times when the castle was still inhabited. The current castle is in good condition since it is part of the Kasteeltuinen Arcen (Castle Gardens of Arcen).

Windmill ‘Rijn en Lek’ is dating back to 1659, when it was built on top of the - only remaining - medieval city gate of the town, the Leuterpoort. In the beginning it was used as a bark mill, but around 1820 it became a flourmill, which it still is. The mill stands proudly above the gate on the dike and is the only mill in the Netherlands on top of a city gate. The ‘Rijn en Lek’ is often confused with the windmill painted by Ruisdael, called ‘The windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede’, which stood a few blocks away. The mill got its name ‘Rijn en Lek’ due to the fact that the river Rhine changes it name into Lek River downstream from Wijk bij Duurstede.

Kasteel Duurstede (Duurstede Castle) is dating back to the 13th century and is one of the oldest medieval castles in the Netherlands. Around 1270 Zweder I van Zuylen van Abcoude built a freestanding keep on a raised and moated site nearby the (lost) city Dorestad. This building was about 11 meters high and had 2.5 meter thick walls. Later on an extra floor and a residential wing with a great hall were added. Until the beginning of the 15th century the castle was possessed by the Van Zuylen van Abcoude family, when they were forced to sell it to the bishops of Utrecht who kept it until 1580. After that year Kasteel Duurstede fell to the States of Utrecht. They had no money to maintain the castle, so it slowly fell into decay. And after the French troops had devastated the town of Wijk bij Duurstede in 1672 the locals repaired their houses and the town walls with stones from the castle. In 1852 the town council became owner of the castle and turned the fortifications around the castle into a park. Until around 1925 the castle could only be reached with a little ferry; nowadays there is a little drawbridge. Today only the two towers and some of the walls remain, but the castle has been renovated to include a terrace cafe, gazebo in the garden and rooms inside which are used for events or weddings.

Kasteel Amerongen (Amerongen Castle) was built between 1670 and 1684 on the site of a medieval castle, that had been burned down by French troops. The great Dutch house, garden and furnishings form a unit seldom seen in the Netherlands. The castle has a rich family-history, going back 700 years. The owners played an important part in the Dutch and European history. Godard Adriaan van Reede (1621-1691) held a key-position in the insurrection against the French supremacy. As a retribution the house was burnt down by the French in 1673, but rebuilt by his wife Margaretha Turnor in Dutch classicist style. After World War I the German Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859-1941) lived at the castle for 18 months and signed his abdication here in 1918. Kasteel Amerongen is surrounded by historical gardens. The castle itself can be visited (quite limited opening hours) only by a guided tour.

The Blauwe Kamer is a nature reserve created in 1992 after a dike along the river Rhine was dug away. Since then the water of the river has free rein in the new nature reserve. As a result, nature is constantly in motion. The dynamics of the river create height differences and attract special plants and animals. Flowery vegetations give color to the landscape. In several places willow forest grows and marshes are created. Nowadays it is a paradise for birds - among them spoonbills, egrets and comarants - and bird lovers. The flora in the area is rich and sometimes consists of species that were previously unknown in the river area. The Blauwe Kamer is home of semi-wild Galloways and Konik horses. The beaver also feels at home. The name of the Blauwe Kamer comes from a manor house from the year 1636. In addition, a brick factory later stood in the nature reserve, until 1975, which bore this name; remnants of this factory can still be seen.

Kasteel Cannenburch (Cannenburch Castle) was built in 1543 by a well known Dutch field marshal, Maarten van Rossum (also Marten van Rossem). He constructed a country house - in the style of the Dutch Renaissance - on the spot of a medieval castle. Van Rossum died in 1555 and his nephew, Hendrik van Isendoorn, inherited the castle and it remained in the family for more than 300 years. In 1882, however, it was acquired by Eduard Baron van Lynden by purchase. In 1905, it came into the possession of Mrs. Frida Cleve-Mollard from Berlin, whose husband Richard Cleve was the last private resident of the castle. Over the years, the castle has been altered and extended many times and it became also a stone entrance bridge. Since the 1950’s Kasteel Cannenburch and surrounding park are owned and managed by the ‘Stichting Geldersch Landschap en Geldersche Kasteelen’, a Dutch heritage foundation. The castle has been restored and the interior has been returned to how it would have been when it was still inhabited by nobility. Nowadays the castle is is a Dutch national monument.

Het Aardhuis was commissioned by King Willem III and designed by court architect Henri Camp in 1861. Originally, the chalet-like building was mainly used as a military meeting centre and as a place to rest after a hunt. Prince Hendrik also liked to stay in Het Aardhuis which he used while hunting. That is why it is mainly known as a hunting chalet. In 1972, Queen Juliana decided to give the impressive black wooden building a different purpose. From a hunting chalet, it became an information centre about nature and wildlife. Today, the ground floor of Het Aardhuis houses a café. On the first floor, one of the rooms is still furnished as it was in the days of King Willem III and Prince Hendrik. Another larger room serves as an information centre for Kroondomein Het Loo (Het Loo Royal Estate). Het Aardhuis is located in the Aardhuispark ; a fenced-off part of Kroondomein Het Loo . The park offers a mixture of open landscape with a wildlife meadow, lanes with old beech and oak trees and water pools. A three-kilometre walking route has been marked out in the park. This route also leads to a hideout for (semi)wildlife spotting.

The Romanesque Magnuskerk (Magnus Church) - named after the bishop of Trani (Italy) - dates from around 1100 and was a replacement of a number of wooden church. It was extended several times during its history. The church tower is a gabled roof tower and dates from the 12th century. The interior of the chuch offers wall paintings from the 13th century. During the Middle Ages, the church also served as court house. Up until the Reformation, which took hold in the province of Drenthe in 1598, the church in Anloo was Roman Catholic. The church was restored between 1941 and 1944 and nowadays is still used for services.

Borger has the largest and the smallest hunebedden (dolmens or passage graves) in the Netherlands on its outskirts and no fewer than sixteen of Drenthe's dolmens in the immediate vicinity. The village is also home of the Hunebedcentrum , a museum telling the story of these mysterious megalith tombs and the people who built them. No doubt Borger is rightfully Hunebedhoofdstad (Hunebed Capital) of the Netherlands.

De Zwaluw (The Swallow) is a so called smock mill. The current mill is located nearby the hamlet Oudemolen - less than 30 houses and about 75 inhabitants - since 1837. It replaced a post mill which itself had replaced a watermill on the Drentsche Aa river. De Zwaluw is a three-storey smock mill on a single-storey brick base. There is no stage, the sails reaching almost to the ground. The smock and cap are thatched. The mill is winded by a tailpole and winch. From 1876 til 1947 the mill was owned by the Greving brothers, who lived in a small cottage near the mill. They milled for the bakers in the area and for the farmers who fed their cattle plenty of grain. The mill was out if use in 1970, but since 1980, the municipality of Tynaarlo is owner of the mill and after that it was subsequently thoroughly restored. Nowadays De Zwaluw has had a group of volunteer millers to run the mill (in principle the mill is open for the public on Saturdays). The mill is listed as a national Dutch monument.

Some autumnal pictures of the Dutch province of Drenthe.

Hunebedden (megalithic tombs) are the oldest monuments in the Netherlands. They were built more than 5.000 years ago in the last phase of the Stone Age by people of the Funnel Beaker Culture, who buried their dead in these hunebedden . The stones of which the dolmens are built are originating from Scandinavia. They were carried south by the advancing land ice during an ice age. When the ice melted, the stones that were carried along were left behind. Hunebed D8 was built between 3400 and 3100 BC and is attributed to the Funnelbeaker culture. It is a fairly large portal tomb with four capstones, eight side stones and two keystones. The hunebed is almost 8 metres long and 4.4 metres wide. The oldest mention dates from 1711.

For centuries the province of Drenthe was a poor and rural area. Over the last 200 years vast areas of peat were extracted and the population grew quickly from 40.000 to almost 500.000 people now. The Balloërveld (also named Ballooërveld) is one of the rare areas that remained more or less untouched. The heathland of the nature is interspersed with peat moors, pine woods and some small sand drifts. It is also home of a sheep herd. The Balloërveld, now managed by Staatsbosbeheer (a Dutch Forestry Commission), has an eventful history that even goes back to prehistoric times. The area originated in the Elster Ice Age. The Balloërveld also housed an important line of defence for the German occupiers in the World War II. The current nature area of 367 acres is part of National Park Drentse Aa.

The Chinese Garden - part of the Hortus Botanicus Haren was built in 1995 after an earlier visit of a Groningen trade mission to several cities in China. It is a historical reconstruction of a garden from the Ming period. The walled garden was designed a famous Chinese urban garden architect from Shaghai. Almost all the material used to build the Chinese Garden was shipped from China to the Netherlands, from the stones in the garden and the wood of the pavilions to the furniture of tea house. Chinese workers laid out the park largely by hand. The result of this cooperation between the Netherlands and Shanghai is the beautiful Chinese garden “The Hidden Kingdom of Ming”, which was officially opened by H.M. Queen Beatrix in 1995.

The Hortus Botanicus in Haren is one of the oldest and largest botanical gardens in the Netherlands. It was founded in 1626 by the pharmacist and botanist Henricus Munting and was originally situated in the city of Groningen. Because of space considerations it relocated to its current location; from 1929 on a new botanical graden was created on that site and became the largest botanical garden in the country. At the Hortus, which covers about 20 acres, there are a large number of very different gardens. Among others the garden consists of an arboretum, pinetum, English garden, a water garden, a rock garden, bamboo garden, a grass garden, agricultural gardens, and Celtic gardens. Since 1995 it also has a walled Chinese Garden . The Hortus was part of the University of Groningen and until the 1980s’ played an important role in the teaching and research of biology especially. Since 2002 a foundation is managing the gardens. We visited the Hortus in late October, so there were almost no flowers to be seen. We just could make a walk along trees and shrubs in beautiful autumn colours.

The Arvanitia Promenadeas is one of the most beautiful walks that Nafplion has to offer. It begins at the end of the small harbor next to the lighthouse and ends a distance of one kilometer reaching the square of Arvanitia next to the beach of Arvanitia. The route of Arvanitia is a paved path, with on one side the Argolic Gulf and on the other the rock walls of Acronafplia with flowers and lots of cactuses. On the second part of the promenade one has a beautiful view towards the imposing Palamidi fortress (PiP6). The name Arvanitia Promenade is due to the fact that Albanians had inhabited the area outside the walls of Nafplion since before the time of the first Venetian occupation.

In the 19th century Old Kardamyli - or Skardamoula as it was then called - was a fortified settlement of the Troupakides-Mourtzinos family. They asserted their sovereignty over neighbouring areas of the Mani-peninsula. The complex - with the Byzantine Agios Spyridon church and a clutch of abandoned fortified tower-houses (one of them nowadays is a museum) - is surrounded by a defensive wall and can be reached througd a large archway.

The Agios Ioannis church (Holy Metropolitan Church of St. John the Baptist of Messina) is the metropolitan church of the city of Messini. In 1986 during devastating earthquakes the church was badly damaged and eventually demolished. Today, a new large church with two large bell towers has been erected. The new church was built in the form of the previous one with some changes such as the dome, the second bell tower and the removal of the porch. The inauguration of the new church was held on October 17, 1993.