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GRONINGEN |
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| Nominally a fiefdom of the Bishops of Utrecht from 1040 until 1536,
the northern city of GRONINGEN was once an important centre of trade.
Heavily bombed in World War II, it is an architectural jumble with few
notable sights, but its large, prestigious university gives it a
cosmopolitan feel quite unexpected in this rustic part of the country.
The centre of town is Grote Markt , a large open space that was badly
damaged by wartime bombing and has been reconstructed with little
imagination. At one corner is the Martinikerk (Easter-Nov Tues-Sat noon-5pm;
¬1.10), a beacon of architectural sanity in the surrounding shambles.
Though the oldest parts of the church go back to 1180, most of it is mid-fifteenth-century
Gothic. The vault paintings in the nave are beautifully restored, and
the lofty choir holds two series of frescoes on the walled-up niches of
the clerestory. Adjoining the church is the seventeenth-century tower
Martinitoren (April-Sept daily 11am/noon-4.30pm; Oct-March Sat & Sun
noon-4.30pm; ¬1.40). West along A-Kerkhof NZ from Grote Markt, the
comprehensive Noordelijk Scheepvaart Museum , Brugstraat 24 (Tues-Sat
10am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; ¬3.60), has displays on maritime trade with the
Indies, the development of peat canals and a series of reconstructed
nautical workshops. In the same building, the smaller Niemeyer
Tabaksmuseum is devoted to tobacco smoking from 1600 to the present day.
The city's biggest and best museum, the Groninger Museum (Tues-Sun
10am-5pm; ¬6.10; www.groninger-museum.nl ) is housed in spectacular
pavilions across from the train station. The west pavilion is given over
to travelling exhibitions but also houses the permanent art collection,
including Rubens' energetic Adoration of the Magi among a small
selection of seventeenth-century works, Hague school paintings, and a
number of late works by the Expressionists of the Groningen De Ploeg
group. Besides this, diaphanous drapes guide you through vitrines of Far
Eastern ceramics and ivory. |
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