Every design for Bergen Op Zoom

Bergen op Zoom is best known for the few days each year when it stops being Bergen op Zoom at all. During vastenavend, the local carnival, the town takes the name Krabbegat, after madder, a crop that once defined the area and has long since vanished, and people hide their faces behind a mask or a length of old net curtain.

The Markiezenhof anchors the centre, a museum that gives the town its sense of a long past, with the Sint-Gertrudiskerk close by. Further out, Fort De Waterschans and Fort Pinssen recall the defences that once ringed the place, while a scattering of rijksmonumenten and war memorials marks the streets in between.

The town is the main settlement of a municipality in the west of North Brabant that also takes in Halsteren and Lepelstraat. Through the year it fills its calendar with a Maria Ommegang, a jazz weekend and a summer festival. Yet the image that stays is a carnival street full of veiled faces, the church tower above them, and a town quietly answering to its other name.