Every design for Baarn

Baarn is best known for its royal connections. Soestdijk Palace, Paleis Soestdijk, was home to Queen Emma and later to Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard, and the young Willem-Alexander and his brothers went to school here while their family lived at Castle Drakesteijn in nearby Lage Vuursche. The Dutch monarch still carries the title Lord of Soest, Baarn and Ter Eem.

The town lies in the middle of the country, on the Utrecht side of the provincial border with North Holland, about eight kilometres east of Hilversum. To the north and east, polders stretch out towards the river Eem, one of the few rivers that rise and reach the sea entirely within the Netherlands. To the south-west, the woods of the Baarnsche Bos connect Baarn with Soestdijk. Trains run to Utrecht, Amersfoort and Amsterdam, and the A1 passes just north of town. Shopping happens on the Laanstraat, and Groeneveld Castle and the Cantons park, a botanical garden, are favourite outings. Someone who lives here is a Baarnaar; someone born and raised here is a Barinees.

And then there is Saturday on the Laanstraat, the shopping street, with the woods of the Baarnsche Bos only a few streets away: the kind of ordinary scene every Barinees misses the moment they move away.