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Haarlem sits at a particular kind of Dutch crossroads: close enough to Amsterdam that day-trippers arrive by the trainload, yet sufficiently self-possessed to reward those who stay longer. The city is the capital of North Holland province and has been a centre of trade, art, and civic pride since the Middle Ages. Its compact historic core, threaded by canals and anchored by the vast Grote Markt, feels less performative than its famous neighbour to the east, which is precisely the point.

The Grote Markt is the natural place to orient yourself. The square is dominated by the Grote Kerk, formally the Church of Saint Bavo, whose soaring Gothic nave contains one of the most celebrated organs in Europe, an instrument that both Handel and the young Mozart played. Around the square, the Stadhuis, a medieval town hall with later Renaissance additions, faces the church across the cobbles in a composition that has barely changed in centuries. From here the city fans out along a grid of canals lined with gabled merchants' houses, many of them dating from Haarlem's seventeenth-century golden age, when the city was a significant force in the Dutch linen trade and home to a school of painters that included Frans Hals.