Every design for Vleuten

Vleuten first appears by name in a document from the twelfth century, though Roman soldiers knew this ground long before that: the frontier of their empire ran along a branch of the Rhine close by, and a Roman fort stood in neighbouring De Meern. For centuries Vleuten was its own municipality; today it is a neighbourhood on the west side of the city of Utrecht.

Kasteel de Haar, the great castle at Haarzuilens, belonged to the same municipality until the merger, and its towers are still the landmark everyone points to on the horizon. Closer in, the village grew around its medieval church, now the Torenpleinkerk, where the old roads met. Around the turn of the last century market gardeners arrived from Utrecht and the Westland, and the fields filled with glasshouses of tomatoes, grapes and later flowers. Then came the new housing of Vleuterweide, and the Máximapark became everyone's back garden, with the Parkpergola and the Observatorium to walk to. The Vindplaats Romeinse wachttoren marks the spot where a Roman watchtower once stood.

For anyone who grew up here, the shape of Vleuten on a map holds both versions of the place at once: the old church square and the greenhouses, and the new streets reaching out towards the park. You knew it before it changed, and you know it now.