Explore The eastern Netherlands
Zutphen, 13km south of Deventer, is everything you might hope for in a Dutch country town: there’s no crass development here and the centre musters dozens of old buildings set amid a medieval street plan that revolves around three long and very appealing piazzas – Groenmarkt, Houtmarkt and Zaadmarkt – with the disjointed seventeenth-century clock tower, the Wijnhuis marking the junction of the first two piazzas. Much of the centre is pedestrianized and, without a supermarket in sight, the town’s old-fashioned shops still flourish, as do its cafés and, in a quiet sort of way, its bars.
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Sir Philip Sidney: or how to die heroically
Sir Philip Sidney: or how to die heroically
It was here at Zutphen that Sir Philip Sidney, the English poet, soldier and courtier, met his end while fighting the Spanish in 1586. Every inch the Renaissance man, Sidney even managed to die in style: mortally wounded in the thigh – after having loaned his leg-armour to a friend – he offered his last cup of water to a wounded chum, protesting “thy need is greater than mine”.
