Haarlem

The siege of Haarlem was an episode of the Eighty Years' War. From 11 December 1572 to 13 July 1573 an army of Philip II of Spain laid bloody siege to the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands, whose loyalties had begun wavering during the previous summer. After the naval battle of Haarlemmermeer and the defeat of a land relief force, the starving city surrendered and the garrison was massacred. The resistance nonetheless was taken as an heroic example by the Orangists at the sieges of Alkmaar and Leiden.

The Remonstrantshofje is a hofje (courtyard surrounded by almshouses) in Haarlem, Netherlands. It is one of the hofjes in Haarlem that is traditionally used to provide housing for elderly people.It was founded in 1773 by Justus and Isabella van Leeuwarden on the site of the old Ursula cloister. The hofje has places for six women. The entrance of the hofje is in a remaining wall of the old cloister, and the old cloister chapel serves as the entrance hall.

The Frans Loenenhofje is a hofje in Haarlem, Netherlands, on the Witte Heren straat. It was named the "Five room" or Vijfkamer hofje in 1607 after the five new rooms that were built from the proceeds of the will and testament of Frans Loenen (1543–1605). Frans Loenen was a Catholic who fled to Haarlem from Amsterdam in 1578 for their milder disposition toward people of the Old Catholic faith. He left all of his goods to the poor in an extraordinary will drawn up 3 days before he died. His friends gave up trying to sort out his legacy, because most of his property was still located in the Spanish Netherlands, then enemy territory, and some of his money was tied up in outstanding bets. For example, he had bet a small fortune of 16,000 guilders that the siege of Sluis would not last two years. It was decided that a hofje would be the best option, in case any of the bets paid out, which they did. The garden of this hofje used to be part of a famed garden from the St Anthony's monastery, which was founded in 1414. The St. Anthony order was later associated with the Vrouwe- en Antonie Gasthuys and the monastery was inhabited by Norbertine monks in 1484. The Norbertines who tended the garden wore white scapulars. Thus the name of the street; "White gentlemen street". They remained there until 1543, when the monastery lands came under the control of the St. Elisabeth Gasthuis. Their lands were officially confiscated and secularized in 1581 by the city council after the Protestant Reformation, just as all other Catholic buildings and lands in Haarlem after the iconoclasm. For some reason the actual moment of transferral of the deeds only took place fifteen years later in 1596, and the Catholic associations with this property was probably the reason it was selected by the executors of the Frans Loenen will. Two years later, in 1607, the provost Jacobus Zaffius sponsored an additional 5 rooms, thereafter known as the "provost rooms" of the Frans Loenen Hofje. Jacobus Zaffius had been abbot in the St. Anthony's monastery in Heiloo from 1578 to 1571, when he became provost of the Sint-Bavokerk. He witnessed the iconoclasm and 3 years later went to jail for refusal to turn over Catholic property to the city council. William of Orange granted him amnesty, and it was on this occasion that he made his donation to the hofje and in 1611 he had his painting made as a memorial to this fact. The hofje currently has 10 rooms for women, who must have a minimum age of 60 years and who must have lived in Haarlem for five years or longer.

The Coomanshof is a former hofje in Haarlem, Netherlands, on the Witte Heren straat. It was named the "mercerie" or cramersneringhe after the local merchant's guild that existed from 1407. The small guild house dates from 1644. The hofje that grew around it is typical of the type of occupational hofjes such as the Brouwershofje that grew out of the local Brewer's guild. The patron saint of the merchants was Saint Nicholas, also the patron saint of Amsterdam. When the guilds were disbanded under Napoleon in 1798, the hofje was rented out until 1854 when it was sold. When the local head of the archives Adriaan Justus Enschedé bought the property in 1871, he demolished the eleven small hofje houses but kept the guild house as a folly for his garden. His main home was on the Zijlstraat. Enschede also found the original gable stone and had it reinstalled in 1871 above the doorway in the Witte Herenstraat.

The Stedelijk Gymnasium Haarlem or the Latin School of Haarlem is a secondary school in Haarlem, Netherlands. The school was founded in 1389 and is therefore one of the oldest schools in the world. The school offers voorbereidend wetenschappelijk onderwijs (preparatory scientific education) exclusively and is an independent gymnasium enrolling 822 students and 95 teachers, for a teacher/student ratio of 8.6.

The Lutherse Hofje is a hofje in Haarlem, Netherlands.

The Lutherse kerk in Haarlem is a Lutheran church dating from the 17th century on the Witte Herenstraat in Haarlem, Netherlands.

The Ten Boom Museum is a museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands, dedicated to The Hiding Place, the subject of a book by Corrie ten Boom. The house where the museum is located was purchased and restored in 1983 by the Corrie ten Boom Fellowship, a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation governed by a board of directors. Mike Evans serves as the chairman of the Board. The Ten Boom family ran a watch shop (horlogerie) on the corner of an alleyway and the main shopping street of Haarlem, the Netherlands. During the Nazi occupation of Haarlem starting in 1942, they provided safe harbour for Jews and other underground refugees in a hiding place they built upstairs. Their large social network in church charities and watchmaker circles made the family quite successful in smuggling refugees until it was betrayed on February 28, 1944. In the alleyway, it would place a small triangular sign to indicate that the coast was clear. After the betrayal, the Nazis were able to collect many more prisoners by falsely placing the triangle in the window. Casper ten Boom, the father, died on March 9, 1944, less than two weeks later, in Scheveningen prison, at 84. Betsie ten Boom died on December 16 in Ravensbrück concentration camp, at 59. Willem died on December 16, 1946, in Hilversum, at 60. His son Christiaan ("Kik") died sometime in April 1945, at 25. Corrie ten Boom survived Ravensbrück and returned to Haarlem and the watch shop. She died in 1983, on her 91st birthday. She wrote several books about her experiences, and this museum opened on her birthday in 1988. The museum is open from 10:00 to 15:30 Tuesday to Saturday.

The City Hall in Haarlem is the seat of the city's government. It was built in the 14th century replacing the Count's castle.

The Grote Markt is the central market square of Haarlem, Netherlands. According to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica; In the great market place in the centre of the city are gathered together the larger number of the most interesting buildings, including the quaint old Fleshers' Hall, built by Lieven de Key in 1603, and now containing the archives; the town hall; the old Stadsdoelen, where the burgesses met in arms; the Groote Kerk, or Great Church; and the statue erected in 1856 to Laurens Janszoon Koster, the printer. The Great Church, dedicated to St Bavo, with a lofty tower (255 ft.), is one of the most famous in Holland, and dates from the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th centuries. Its great length (460 ft.) and the height and steepness of its vaulted cedar-wood roof (1538) are very impressive. ... In the belfry are the damiaatjes, small bells presented to the town, according to tradition, by William I, Count of Holland (d. 1222), the crusader. The town hall was originally a palace of the counts of Holland, begun in the 12th century, and some old 13th-century beams still remain; but the building was remodelled in the beginning of the 17th century. It contains a collection of antiquities (including some beautiful goblets) and a picture gallery which, though small, is celebrated for its fine collection of paintings by Frans Hals.

Smedestraat 33 (Dutch: Smedestraat 33) is the address of a doorway in Haarlem. The brickwork of the doorway, including a round false window, is from the second half of the 17th century, and has been declared one of the national monuments of The Netherlands. This brick doorway only recently acquired the lock on the door and was originally an open access gateway to an alley that separated two houses and joined up with the small public garden called the Wijngaardtuin. The lock has been added so it can be used as the front door to access the apartment located above the shop on the left and the house in the rear of number 35 on the right. In the Haarlem shopping district, most former front doors of homes have been replaced by shop fronts extending over the entire property line on the shopping street side. For homes without a rear or side alleyway, the upper apartments have become inaccessible and are used as warehouses. In larger Dutch cities, where many former alleyways have been absorbed into shopfronts, this has led to whole sections of town with very few residents, as there is no room left for access to the upper apartments except from within the shops themselves. Seen as a possible fire hazard and prone to decay, efforts have been made in recent years to "unlock" these inaccessible spaces and make them suitable for student or other rental housing. The city of Haarlem hopes to avoid such situations by formally protecting all historical alleyways and not allowing them to be "added" to shop frontage. In Vermeer's Little Street, two such 17th century alleyways can be seen side by side; neither has such interesting brickwork, however.

The Zuiderhofje is a hofje in Haarlem, Netherlands.