Every design for Heemskerk

Castles give Heemskerk its reputation – Slot Assumburg on the east side, Marquette in its own estate, and the long-lost Kasteel Oud Haerlem – but everyday life here is gentler than that list suggests. After the age of knights and nobles it settled into being a small, quiet village at the foot of the dunes in Kennemerland, living on farming, market gardening and cattle. Strawberries went to the market in neighbouring Beverwijk on the backs of donkeys, which is how the people of Heemskerk earned the donkey as their nickname and symbol. The town has no other villages within its borders, just the hamlets of Noorddorp and Heemskerkerduin.

The Huldtoneel, a man-made mound beside the Rijksstraatweg, is where the Counts of Holland were once inaugurated, and tradition holds that it was a Germanic sanctuary even before the Romans came. Today Marquette is a hotel where couples marry and pose for photographs in the grounds, while Assumburg has served as a youth hostel. Around the Reformed church, with its medieval tower, the old village still gathers.

On the map the dunes, the castle grounds and the streets between them line up, and for anyone raised here each one holds a walk, a bike ride or a summer remembered.