Every design for Zoetermeer

At the bottom of a medieval valley hole, archaeologists in Zoetermeer once found a carved wooden pole dating back to the year 985. It is one of the clearest signs that this place is far older than its modern skyline suggests. The village paid an old tax to the Count of Holland that only the oldest settlements owed, and the first written proof of it dates from 1269, when Count Floris V gave part of that tax away as a dowry. Even older finds have surfaced here, too: bones of mammoths and aurochs dug up with the sand for new housing.

Walking down the historic Dorpsstraat brings back a different Zoetermeer, the village that grew there from the thirteenth century beside a freshwater lake. That lake was drained in 1614, but the name stayed, and locals turned its literal meaning, sweet lake, into Sweet Lake City. Until the late sixties it was still a small village; then it grew as a new town for The Hague and became a city in its own right.

If you grew up among its parks and new districts, this map carries both stories: the young city you know, and the thousand-year-old village at its centre.