Haarlem

The organ of 1738 carries close to five thousand pipes. Mozart played it at ten years old, and in summer there are recitals with no charge.

Group portraits from the seventeenth century hang inside a former almshouse. The people in the paintings are the ones who funded this very building.

Opened in 1784 as the oldest museum in the country, and electric light was never installed. On a grey day the skylights alone leave the cases hard to read.

A mill on the river bank lost to fire in 1932 and rebuilt in 2002. A guide takes you to the top balcony for a look across the town roofs.

More than twenty courtyard almshouses hide around the centre, and most open by day only. Opening hours are on the gate plate, and in many of them photographs are not welcome.

Ten minutes by train to the North Sea, with cycle paths running behind the dunes. Timber cafes go up on the sand for the summer and come down again in autumn.

South of town the flat land runs in coloured stripes with paths threaded between the plots. Walking into a field damages the bulbs, so people keep to the track and look from there.

Moorings and cafes follow the river, and the bascule bridge lifts for each boat. When it goes up, cars and bicycles wait side by side.

Flower, cheese and clothing stalls cover the whole square and pack up at four in the afternoon. As they fold, the leftover flowers go cheap by the bunch.

A slim tower of pale sandstone stands out among the red brick roofs. The church below works as an exhibition space, and the tower itself is closed to climbing.

Home of the ten Boom family, who hid Jews behind a false wall in a bedroom above their watch shop during the German occupation. The false wall and the hiding space can still be seen. Every visit is a guided tour that needs booking ahead.

Built in 1355, the only one left of the twelve city gates. It guards the old road out toward Amsterdam, hence the name. Its canal-side and road-side towers differ in shape, so walk round to see both faces.

A national park of dunes between the city and the North Sea. European bison and Highland cattle roam it, and walkers sometimes meet them on the trails. Get off at Overveen station and the entrance is a walk away.

Built in 1849, it began pumping the next year and turned Haarlemmermeer lake into dry land. Its steam engine is believed to be the largest ever built, with an outer cylinder 3.7 m across. The pumping station is now a museum.

An Art Nouveau station rebuilt in 1908. Tile pictures of trains and landscapes line the waiting room walls. The country's first railway linked Amsterdam with this town in 1839.