Arnhem

A city (approx. 160,000 inhabitants) located in the eastern Netherlands, approx. 100 km southeast of Amsterdam (➤ map)(➤ map). The administrative center of the province of Guelders.

The area where today's Arnhem is located has been inhabited since prehistoric times. The first mentions come from the end of the 9th century. In 1233, the settlement obtained city rights, and in 1443 Arnhem became one of the cities of the Hanseatic League. Later, after 1473, the city passed from hand to hand several times (e.g. it was in the hands of the rulers of Burgundy for some time, then the rulers of Guelders), and finally in 1585 it became part of the United Provinces, the first fully independent Dutch state, the predecessor of today's Netherlands. In the 19th century, Arnhem became a place where, like in The Hague, the Dutch returning from India willingly settled, as well as a summer resort visited by wealthy guests from other parts of the Netherlands. In September 1944, the Arnhem area was the scene of a failed Allied airborne operation known as Operation Market Garden, which was intended to enable Marshal Montgomery's 21st Army Group to quickly enter the Ruhr and hasten the end of the war, but failed among others because the Allies failed to hold the bridge over the Rhine known to everyone from the film A bridge too far (known as John Frostbrug, after one of the commanders of the British paratroopers, whose unit held a section of road leading to bridge from the north side), marked on the map below with the marker .

Today's Arnem, while remaining an important economic and administrative center of Gelderland, is not a uniform urban and architectural complex, which is the result of the not very successful reconstruction of a city seriously damaged during the war. While here, it is worth visiting the area of the small square called Korenmarkt , with preserved old buildings, and take a look at a few other monuments. They include e.g. two churches, St. Eusebius (Sint-Eusebiuskerk) from the 15th-16th century, today used mainly for exhibition purposes (although services are held here from time to time), with a platform observation deck on the tower (elevator), and the Saint Walburg's Church (Sint-Walburgiskerk or Sint-Walburgisbasiliek), with a history dating back to the 14th century, completely destroyed during the war, rebuilt after the war, today no longer serving religious functions, but which is a place where exhibitions and concerts are organized. The marker stands for the 15th-century former house of Maarten van Rossem, known as Duivelshuis (because of the decorations on the facade), today belonging to the city, and the marker - for Sabelspoort, a baroque gate from the 17th century, which is the only surviving element of the old city walls. The marker is used to mark Sonsbeek Park, Arnhem's most popular city park, known for its from periodically organized international sculpture exhibitions; some readers may also be interested in the information that the park has a monument to Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, an outstanding Dutch physicist born in Arnhem, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1902).

However, the tourist importance of Arnhem over the last few decades (and still is, although with time, for obvious reasons, to a lesser extent) was associated not so much with the old history of the city and its monuments, but rather with the latest history - the period of World War II and the aforementioned Operation Market Garden. Veterans, veterans' families and tourists came (and still come) to Arnhem to see the replica of Frost's Bridge (the bridge that was fought over during Operation Market Garden was destroyed by Allied air forces in October 1944) and to visit the Airborne Museum at Hartenstein in Oosterbeek (Arnhem Battle Museum) and the nearby military cemetery.


The area around Arnhem is interesting for tourists. One of the attractions is the Nederlands Openluchtmuseum - an open-air museum opened in 1918, where you can see houses, homesteads, craft workshops from various regions of the Netherlands, windmills, drawbridges over canals, etc.; another - the nearby safari (Koninklijke Burgers' Zoo), a 45 hectare zoo, one of the largest in the Netherlands. A little further to the northwest lies the Hoge Veluwe National Park , with the famous Kröller-Müller Museum, known for the second largest (after Amsterdam) collection of Van Gogh paintings (marker stands for the southern entrance to the park - more information can be found at varia.html).