Utrecht

This position on the natural dividing line between the two territories favored the development of the town over the centuries, since the heathlands, lying higher, were out of reach of the storm tides of the North Sea and offered ideal conditions for human settlement before the dyking of the fenlands.

From very early times Utrecht was one of the principal political, economic and cultural centers of the Netherlands. The seat of the provincial administration, with a famous university founded in 1636, it is also an important religious center, the see of a Roman Catholic and an Old Catholic archbishop and the seat of the Oecumenical Council, the supreme Roman Catholic authority of the Netherlands. The existence of the University has led to the establishment in Utrecht of other educational and research institutions, including branches of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science, the Central Institute for Nutritional Research, space research laboratories and the Institute of International Law, to mention only the most important.

But Utrecht is not only an educational, research and ecclesiastical center; it is also of importance in the services sector, commerce, transport and industry. Industry is concentrated primarily on the west side of the city, where railroad lines, roads and canals converge. The most important industrial installations are steelworks and rolling mills, engineering and rolling-stock plants, factories producing electrical apparatus and appliances, petrochemicals and textiles, railroad workshops and furniture factories.

Tourism also makes a significant contribution to the economy, for the picturesque old town with its historic buildings, surrounded and intersected by grachten and canals, attracts large numbers of visitors, as does the beautiful surrounding country.

Known to the Romans as Traiectum ad Rhenum and later to the Frisians and Franks as Wiltaburg, Utrecht is one of the oldest towns in the Netherlands. The Romans built a castellum below (Old Dutch uut) a ford (Old Dutch trecht) on the Kromme Rijn, and remains of this were found outside the Cathedral; and the situation of the little trading settlement which grew up "below the ford" gave Utrecht its name.

The Frankish king Dagobert I (623-638) founded here the first church in the territory of the Frisians, whose first bishop, appointed in 696, was St Willibrord. The bishops (from 1559 archbishops) of Utrecht were powerful and influential prelates, and the town was famed from an early stage for its magnificent churches. It belonged to Lotharingia (Lorraine) and later to the Holy Roman Empire, and was frequently the imperial residence. In 1528 Bishop Henry of Bavaria ceded secular authority over the town to the Emperor Charles V, who built the castle of Vredenburg.

Utrecht was the birthplace in 1459 of Adriaen Florisz, one of the most learned men of his time, tutor to Charles V and later Pope as Hadrian VI. In 1579 the Union of Utrecht, an alliance between the seven Protestant northern provinces of the Low Countries which paved the way for their separation from the southern provinces, was concluded here under the chairmanship of Count John of Nassau (Jan van Nassau) the Elder, brother of William the Silent. In 1672 the town was sacked by French forces. The treaty of Utrecht in 1713 ended the War of the Spanish Succession.

Alone among the towns of the Netherlands, Utrecht remained within its medieval circuit of walls (built in 1130) until the 19th century, when the town's increasing prosperity led to the development of new residential districts outside the old town.