Every design for Waddinxveen

When the lift bridge over the Gouwe goes up, Waddinxveen waits. The bridge has stood here since 1936 and is the picture most people have of the town: a working crossing over the river where everything began, when Floris IV, Count of Holland, sold a stretch of peat land along the Gouwe on 20 April 1233.

De Vergeten Plek, a small artwork whose name means 'the forgotten place', marks something less visible: the lowest point of the Dutch polders, more than seven metres below Amsterdam Ordnance Datum. Around it lies an everyday town near Gouda, long known for its furniture makers and stroopwafel bakers. People meet at the Gouweplein shopping centre, built on the old grounds of the CVV Be Fair football club, and head north into the Gouwebos and the Voorofsche Polder, the green belt between Waddinxveen and Boskoop, for a walk or a ride. The Monument Koningin Wilhelmina and De Poort der Bevrijding are part of the same familiar scenery.

Three villages grew into one here, and you can still read them in the older buildings. Wear the map with the Gouwe running through it, and the lift bridge sits right where it belongs.