Every design for Leusden

Leusden is known for its age. As Villa Lisiduna it appears in a charter of 777, and the church tower of Oud-Leusden, dating back at least to the 11th century, is one of the oldest in the Netherlands. The church that belonged to it was pulled down long ago, and the tower now stands on its own, visible from the A28.

De Heiligenberg recalls the monastery founded nearby around the year 1000 by Bishop Ansfridus of Utrecht, who died there in 1010. Older still are the burial mounds of the Bronze Age at Oud-Leusden and on the Leusderheide, and the foundations of a small Roman watchtower found within the municipality. In the seventeenth century this was tobacco country, at its height around 1700, before grain took over. Leusden itself is two farming villages grown into one: Hamersveld and Leusbroek, which merged into a mainly residential town in the 1970s. The western part of the municipality climbs the slopes of the Utrecht Hill Ridge into forest and heath, while the east opens onto the farmland of the Gelderse Valley, and the Museumbunker Grebbelinie and Lockhorst belong to that same landscape.

However far you travel, the road back past that solitary tower is the road home.