Every design for Middelburg
The big city that shaped you
13 unique designs from the city of Middelburg in Zeeland – map designs, local expressions and symbols only people who know the place will read. Also available as t-shirt, hoodie or tote bag.
T-shirt
from 249 SEK
Hoodie
from 499 SEK
Tote bag
from 129 SEK
About Middelburg
Lens makers
Capital of Zeeland
City gates
Lenses made Middelburg famous, the kind that changed the way people saw the world. In the Golden Age its spectacle-makers, among them Zacharias Janssen and Hans Lipperhey, are credited with the first microscope and telescope, and the town was a centre of lens crafting.
The Koepoort and the Gistpoort, two of the old city gates, still mark the way into a town whose story starts with a ring fort built on Walcheren against Viking raids. Middelburg was granted city rights in 1217 and became a trading hub between England and the cities of Flanders, busy enough for Chaucer to mention in The Canterbury Tales. Later it was, after Amsterdam, the most important centre of the Dutch East India Company, a past that also tied it to the slave trade, remembered today by Het Zeeuws Slavernijmonument.
The Stadhuis, the Zeeuws museum and the Lange Jan anchor the centre, with the Kuiperspoort close by. If Middelburg is your town, you carry a place that has looked outward for a thousand years.
Shown on the map
Location: Zeeland, Netherlands
Coordinates: 51.4997°N, 3.6137°E
