Every design for Lisse

Lisse sits on an old beach ridge in the heart of the Duin- en Bollenstreek, its story closely bound up with neighbouring Hillegom and Sassenheim. All around it the sandy soil has been worked for bulbs for centuries, and the town still sends flower bulbs to more than a hundred countries.

Spring here has a feeling all its own. The fields turn to bands of colour, hundreds of thousands of visitors arrive for Keukenhof, and the Bollenstreek Bloemencorso rolls through the main streets. In August the gardens of Kasteel Keukenhof fill up again for Castlefest, a fantasy festival. The rest of the year Lisse is quieter: a village of growers, auctions and trading houses, with the Keukenhofmolen, Museum de Zwarte Tulp and Huis Dever, a restored castle tower from the 14th century, all part of the everyday scenery. The estates that once lined the dunes are gone, cleared for bulb fields, all except Keukenhof itself.

When the tulips are over and the coaches have gone home, the fields fall green again and Lisse belongs once more to the people who live here.