Every design for Dokkum

Dokkum is the place where, by tradition, the Anglo-Saxon missionary Boniface met his death, and that story has shaped the town ever since. It lies south of the Wadden Sea and west of the Lauwersmeer, where the Dokkumer Ee meets the Dokkumergrootdiep, on the border between the Frisian clay country and the wooded Wâlden.

What makes it stand out is its shape. The bolwerken, the bulwarks raised in the years when the town mattered to the war at sea, still ring the old centre almost intact, so the town reads on a map like a drawing from another century. Inside them is the Markt, the city hall, churches and Museum Dokkum; outside, parks such as the Tolhuispark and the Fonteinspark soften the edges. The statue of Bonifatius keeps the founding legend in plain sight, and the town still serves as the shopping centre for the whole of north-east Friesland.

If you grew up here, those walls framed every walk and bike ride. Seeing them on a map brings the whole place back: the water, the bastions and the way home.