Every design for Tiel

Tiel is held between two rivers, the Waal to the south and the Linge to the north, with the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal closing it off to the east. Few Dutch towns are older. When the great trading post of Dorestad faded, part of its trade moved here, and the Frankish king Zwentibold, a great-grandson of Charlemagne, granted Tiel the right to levy tolls. Its merchants dealt closely with England and Germany, a chronicler wrote that Vikings plundered and burned the settlement, and the town later joined the Hanseatic League.

Walking the dike on a grey morning, it is easy to feel how long people have lived on this ground. On the edge of town, archaeologists uncovered a burial site more than four thousand years old, nicknamed the Stonehenge of the Netherlands, whose passages line up with the sun at the solstices; among the finds was the oldest glass bead ever discovered in the country.

The Waterpoort still opens the town to the river, as it did for its merchants centuries ago, and Flipje, the cheerful mascot of the old jam factory, adds a lighter touch. Between them they make Tiel worth wearing.