Utrecht – a Capital, Municipality, and Province

Utrecht is the capital city of the province and the municipality of same name. This city, with a territory of about 96,000 km2 and a population of about 283,000 inhabitants, is the fourth largest city tourists could find in the Netherlands when they travel to that destination. This destination is ideal for all those visitors who wish to discover interesting facts and places related to the history of the Netherlands when they travel to this destination for a vacation.

At its beginnings, during the 1st century, the city of Utrecht was a wooden Roman fortification or Castellum. This fortification was built next to the River Rhine and was known as the Fortress of Traiectum. Towards the 2nd century, the wooden parts of this fortification were replaced by stone, and still nowadays tourists can visit ruins from them, being these among the most interesting attractions offered by this city, although it counts with a great amount of other unique historical spots and constructions as well.

During the middle Ages, the city of Utrecht was considered the most important place in all the northern region of Netherlands. Besides this, during that same époque, the first Bishop of this province, Willibrordus, established in the city, becoming later the archbishop of the Frisians. Also during the Middle Ages, around the year 1122, Utrecht actually received its city rights, in such a way that only since then it can be formally referred to as a city.

One of the most important moments in the history of Utrecht took place towards the year 1713, when the Treaty of Utrecht was signed with the purpose of settling the War of the Spanish Succession. Other relevant moment in the life of this city was when the railway that connects it with Amsterdam was built in 1843. Since the construction of that railway, this city's prosperity started increasing as well as it gradually started becoming the main hub of the Dutch railway network.

The city of Utrecht has an important amount of museums and cultural buildings visitors should not miss during their vacation. One of these museums is the Centraal Museum, a very interesting museum that offers arts and municipal history exhibits. Other interesting museum visitors can meet in Utrecht is the National Museum from Musical Clock to Street Organ, offering a variety of unique musical instruments, some of them from several centuries ago. Besides this, there also are several other peculiar museums located at different spots within the city and municipality or Utrecht, such as the Aboriginal Art Museum, the Railroad Museum, and the University Museum.

Utrecht is also known to be the birth place of a large amount of important or famous people. Among these people, we can name, for example, the Pope Adrian VI, Marco Van Basten, Dick Bruna, Det de Beus, Louis Andriessen, Theo Van Doesburg, Gerhard Van Honthorst, Anton Reinhard Falck, C.H.D. Buys Ballot, Gerard’t Hooft, Anton Geesink, Trijn Van de Leemput, and Fred Kaps, among many others.