Every design for Vianen

Vianen is best known as the town of the Brederodes, the noble family that married into its lordship early in the 15th century and made it a flourishing little state of its own, a self-proclaimed sovereign lordship until 1795. Laid out as a fortified town on the Lek, with walls and gates such as the Lekpoort, it could put pressure on the bishop of Utrecht, and in the Middle Ages its status as a free city made it a haven for fugitives.

Something of that independent spirit still lingers about the old centre. Parts of the wall still girdle the streets, and Batestein Castle, once counted among the most beautiful in the Netherlands, survives only as the Hofpoort, a 17th-century brick gate, and a water pump. The Stedelijk Museum Vianen and the Hof van Brederode keep the family's memory alive, and every October the town celebrates its city rights with a traditional horse market, a fair and old Dutch games.

Stand before the Hofpoort and picture it: a lone brick gate where a whole castle went up in flames in 1696, kept by the town for more than three centuries.