Every design for Brunssum

The parish of Brunssum is recorded as early as the twelfth century, and its church of Saint Gregorius has been rebuilt four times since. The latest version was partly paid for by the Dutch State Mines, because the one before it had been wrecked by the ground sinking beneath it. That is Brunssum's story in a single building: a Limburg village that coal turned into a town.

It lies in the south-east of Limburg, in the old eastern mining district, where the lowlands start to rise into hills. A live geological fault, the Feldbiss, cuts right through the town and troubled the miners for years. The Brunssummerheide spreads across the south and west, and the Roode Beek runs through the eastern neighbourhoods. The mines closed in the nineteen-seventies, and where the Hendrik mine once worked, a NATO headquarters now stands.

The Herdenkingsmonument Verongelukte Mijnwerkers honours the men who went underground and did not come back. Anyone with a grandfather on its list knows why this town is worth carrying with them.