Groningen
— — the bell tower the city counts itself by.
Not only on a wall.
“The northernmost major Dutch city, capital of its own province, surrounded by polder country and the long flat fields running out toward the Wadden Sea. The Martinitoren leans a little over the Grote Markt — ninety-seven metres of brick, finished in the late fifteenth century. A university town since 1614, so the cafes stay full and the bicycles outnumber the cars by a good margin.
Groningen, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Groningen is the largest city in the north of the Netherlands and the capital of the province that shares its name. The city sits at roughly one metre above sea level on the Hondsrug ridge, ringed by polders draining north toward the Wadden Sea. Population near 240,000, of whom about a quarter are students of the University of Groningen — founded in 1614 — or the Hanze University of Applied Sciences. The historic centre is compact and walkable, organised around the Grote Markt, the Vismarkt, and a partial belt of canals that mark the line of the seventeenth-century fortifications.
The Martinitoren — the Old Grey — rises 97 metres over the Grote Markt, the freestanding bell tower of the Martinikerk. The current tower, completed around 1482, is the third on the site, the prior two having collapsed and burned. Inside hangs a four-bell peal cast by the Hemony brothers in 1662 and a carillon of forty-nine bells. The brick Gothic Martinikerk beside it dates to the thirteenth century. The Goudkantoor on the Waagplein, finished in 1635, served as the city's gold-assay office and is now a cafe.
Direct trains from Amsterdam Centraal reach Groningen in just over two hours; the station building of 1896 is itself a small monument. The Groninger Museum, finished in 1994 to a design by Alessandro Mendini, sits on its own island in the canal opposite the station — a deliberate clash of pastel volumes that has aged into a landmark. Market days fill the Grote Markt and the Vismarkt on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday. Late August brings the Noorderzon performance festival to the Noorderplantsoen park.