Middelburg

Middelburg probably dates from the late 8th or early 9th century, when it was one of three fortified towns built on Walcheren, then an island, to guard against Viking raids. A settlement grew up around today's Markt in the 10th century, and in 1127 Premonstratensian canons from Antwerp founded an abbey inside the old ring-shaped fort. The town received city rights in 1217 and became an important trading centre between England and the rising cities of Flanders, a trade Chaucer mentions in The Canterbury Tales.

In the Eighty Years' War Middelburg, unlike many other Zeeland towns, took the Spanish side, and the rebels took it only after a siege from 1572 to 1574. Monastic life ended, and the abbey became the seat of government for Zeeland. The Golden Age followed: the Zeeland chamber of the Dutch East India Company was the most powerful after Amsterdam's, and the population grew from about 7,000 in 1576 to about 27,000 a century later. The town was also deeply involved in the slave trade. Its spectacle-makers, among them Zacharias Janssen and Hans Lipperhey, are often credited with inventing the microscope and the telescope.

Decline set in after about 1660 as Rotterdam and Amsterdam drew trade away. On 17 May 1940 bombs and fire destroyed much of the old centre, including the town hall, the abbey and many old warehouses; whether German bombers or French artillery were responsible is still uncertain, and the city archives were lost. British troops liberated the town on 6 November 1944, and the destroyed buildings were rebuilt along pre-war lines as far as possible.

Middelburg's identity is that of a provincial capital with a merchant past. Over 1,100 national monuments stand in the centre, among the highest totals of any Dutch town, and the rebuilt abbey, town hall and canal houses are a point of local pride. Locals call the town hall tower Malle Betje, Crazy Beth, because its clock always runs a little behind the Lange Jan's. Zeeland's naval heroes Cornelis and Johan Evertsen lie in a marble tomb in the abbey's New Church.

The town has a long record of Jewish life: a Sephardic burial ground lies outside the old wall, an Ashkenazi one inside it, and the 17th-century synagogue, the third built in the Golden Age Netherlands, was restored in 1994; a plaque in the station remembers Zeeland's Jews deported from here. William of Orange considered founding the first Dutch university here in 1575 but chose Leiden, and Zeeland had none until University College Roosevelt opened in 2004 as an honours college of Utrecht University, named after the Roosevelt family, whose ancestry traces to Zeeland.

The year is busy with festivals: a jazz festival at Whitsun, a mussel festival in late June, two folklore days in summer, a funfair in August and the Winterstad season in December. Walcheren's traditional dress is now worn daily by only a handful of women, and parts of the province belong to the strict Protestant Bible Belt. Football clubs include Jong Ambon, whose players are mostly Ambonese.

The town itself had about 43,000 residents at the start of 2023, making it the largest city in Zeeland, and the whole municipality, which includes Arnemuiden and several villages, had about 50,000 in 2026. It is the seat of the provincial government, housed in the abbey, as well as the regional water board and Rijkswaterstaat's Zeeland office, which moved to new buildings near the station in the 2000s.

Government, education and services employ many people. University College Roosevelt teaches in the old town hall, and the HZ University of Applied Sciences has a campus here. Shopping is a draw for the whole region: Middelburg has the largest range of shops in Zeeland, the Thursday market on the Markt is the largest in Zeeland, and late-night shopping is on Thursdays.

Daily life is unhurried. People cycle along the canal ring, gather on the Markt on market days and head to the Walcheren beaches in summer, a short ride away. The winters have grown milder, and skating on the canals, once a favourite pastime, has become rare since about 2013. The climate is warming: the countryside just outside the town recorded 40.9°C in July 2019.

Zeeland's own pastry is the bolus, a sweet bread of Jewish origin: a soft white yeast dough rolled in dark brown sugar and cinnamon and baked in a spiral, so that the sugar melts into a sticky, caramel-like coat. In some parts of the region the dough includes lemon zest, and it is usually eaten with coffee, often with butter spread on the flat underside. Bakeries across the town sell it, and local shops also sell babbelaars, butter sweets from Zeeland.

The sea supplies much of the rest. Yerseke, on the Oosterschelde, is known for its mussel and oyster farming, so prosperous that the village earned the nickname the Klondike of Zeeland and mussels the name black gold, and the town holds its own mussel festival in late June.

For a drink, the Markt and the Vlasmarkt are the centres of evening life, and beer cafés serve wide selections that include many Belgian brands. In mid-May the town also holds an abbey beer festival. On Saturdays the Markt holds a fruit and vegetable market.