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Few Dutch cities carry their identity as completely as Delft does. The blue-and-white pottery that bears its name, the canal-threaded streets of honey-coloured brick, the memory of Johannes Vermeer who was born and buried here: all of it coheres into something unusually self-consistent for a city of barely 100,000 people. Delft sits between The Hague and Rotterdam in the province of South Holland, close enough to both that day-trippers arrive in numbers, yet compact enough that the centre absorbs them without losing its composure.

The old town is arranged around the Markt, one of the largest market squares in the Netherlands, anchored at one end by the Gothic bulk of the Nieuwe Kerk and at the other by the Renaissance facade of the Stadhuis. From there the city unfolds along a network of canals, the Oude Delft being the oldest and perhaps the most photographed, its water reflecting the stepped gables above. The Prinsenhof, a former convent turned museum, stands on this canal and marks the spot where William of Orange was assassinated in 1584, an event that reverberated across the entire Dutch revolt against Spanish rule. History in Delft is not decorative; it is structural.