Netherlands Guide
Noord-Holland
Edam
Just 3km from Volendam, you might expect EDAM to be jammed with tourists considering the international fame of the rubbery red balls of cheese that carry its name. In fact, Edam usually lacks the crowds and remains a delightful, good-looking and prosperous little town of neat brick houses, high gables, swing bridges and slender canals. Founded by farmers in the twelfth century, it experienced a temporary boom in the seventeenth as a shipbuilding centre with river access to the Zuider Zee. Thereafter, it was back to the farm – and the excellent pasture land surrounding the town is still grazed by large herds of cows, though nowadays most Edam cheese is produced elsewhere, even in Germany ("Edam" is the name of a type of cheese and not its place of origin). This does, of course, rather undermine the authenticity of Edam's open-air cheese market, held every Wednesday morning in July and August on the Kaasmarkt, but it's still a popular attraction and the only time the town heaves with tourists.
At the heart of Edam is the Damplein, a pint-sized main square where an elongated humpbacked bridge has long vaulted the Voorhaven canal, which now connects the town with the Markermeer and formerly linked it to the Zuider Zee. At a stroke, the bridge stopped the canal flooding the town, as it had done with depressing regularity, but local ship builders hated the thing as it restricted navigation, and on several occasions they launched night-time raids to break it down, though eventually they bowed to the will of the local council.
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