The Wall Houses of Amersfoort

A couple weeks ago I went to the city of Utrecht one last time so I could finish seeing the medieval collection at the Catharijneconvent museum.  I seem to always run out of time there.  It ended up taking me three separate trips to see it all! 

 This was one of the nicest objects I saw in the Catharijneconvent that day.  It is the cover for a Gospel book with ivory plaques and ancient carved gem stones.  I also got to go to the Centraalmuseum where they have paintings by the "Utrecht Caravaggisti"--Catholic seventeenth-century artists who went to Italy and brought Caravaggio's dramatic baroque style back to the Netherlands.

The white boat sailing down this canal in Utrecht is a bicycle boat!  I'd never heard of one of these before, but trust the Dutch to invent one (there are more bicycles than people in the Netherlands)!  Two people sitting in the front peddle a wheel that propels the boat through the water.  I've been told that it's very difficult to do.  I thought cycling into the heavy Dutch wind was bad, but imagine trying to peddle against water!

 

I finished up the day in Utrecht by going to another free concert at the Domkerk--the remains of the city's old cathedral.  I keep getting lucky with the music being performed when I'm there.  That Saturday it was another beautiful Renaissance choral work--a mass for the Easter season.  It had rained during the concert, and the sky was still pretty overcast when I left, but I decided that on my way home I should stop in the city of Amersfoort.  I'd never been there before, and even though everything would be closed I thought I could just walk around a little.  I'm so glad I did!  It is one of the prettiest cities I've visited in the Netherlands.  This is a view of the tower from the Church of Our Lady.  Sadly, the tower is all that remains of the church, rising above the quiet streets and canals.

Amersfoort still has a double ring of medieval walls surrounding it, and there are several gates to the city flanked by towers.

The old city walls are lined with "muurhuizen," or "wall houses."  These are fifteenth-century homes  built into the brick and stone of the city's fortifications.

And people still live in them!  I wouldn't mind having a house in a the medieval wall of Amersfoort!  I noticed that this home with the red shutters even had a religious monogram from late Middle Ages embedded in the bricks near the top window.

I walked along the perimeter of the walls, past more city gates,

beside more wall houses, some with little gardens, like this one with roses climbing over the door,

and down canals lined with trees.

I ended with this impressive gate spanning a canal into the city.  The gray sky and the light rain made the green of the grass and the trees even brighter.