Every design for Kaatsheuvel

At the gates of the Efteling, visitors from all over the world queue for a day of fairy tales; for the people of Kaatsheuvel, the theme park is simply part of the neighbourhood. The town is the largest in the municipality of Loon op Zand and its capital, and it doubles as a gateway to the Loonse en Drunense Duinen National Park.

The Efteling Museum sits inside the park, but the town's own story is older than any of its rides. Kaatsheuvel began in the fourteenth century as a community of peat cutters in the lordship of Venloon, digging fuel out of the soil, drying it and shipping it away. When the peat gave out, people turned to farming and hunting in the woods, and much later to shoemaking, like the rest of the Langstraat. Two more nature areas, Huis Ter Heide and the Westelijke Langstraat, close the circle around the town, and old tales still tell of a robber gang from the seventeenth century, the band of the White Feather.

Wear Kaatsheuvel and the Anton Pieckcarrousel comes along, but so do the dunes, the peat cutters and the shoemakers who were here first.