Every design for Borger

Have you ever had a neighbour quite as old as Borger's? The village, on the Hondsrug ridge in Drenthe, lives beside Hunebed D27 Borger, the largest dolmen in the Netherlands: a long chamber of glacial boulders, capstones still in place, built by farming people thousands of years before the village had a name. Borger itself turns up in records in the Middle Ages, an esdorp that grew along the road from Groningen to Coevorden.

What sets it apart is how close that deep past stays to ordinary life. The Hunebedcentrum next to D27 tells the story of the stones, while Hunebed D28 Buinen and Hunebed D29 Buinen lie a short ride away, and near D28 copper objects were found that rank among the oldest in the country. In the village the church tower has stood since the fourteenth century, and an eighteenth-century sheep pen still remembers how the heath was farmed.

The open-air theatre, the market on Tuesdays and the summer fair keep Borger busy, but the dolmens set its rhythm. If you come from here, you have grown up among the oldest neighbours anyone could ask for.