Destinations
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keyboard_arrow_rightFriesland
keyboard_arrow_rightHoorn
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Map data ©2018 Google
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airplanemode_activeFlights to Hoorn ()
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History
Hoorn was probably founded around the year 1200, and quickly gained in importance as a harbour town in the 14th century, developing trade links with the Baltic and Flanders. In 1356 Hoorn became a chartered city, and continued to prosper. It became one the most important and wealthiest towns on the Zuiderzee, and it was even competing with Amsterdam. Hoorn's importance was emphasized in the 17th century as the one of the six cities with a chamber of the Dutch East-Indies Company VOC. The town boasted numerous warehouses and shipyards, and ships from Hoorn sailed all around the world - Cape Horn was named after the town when two ships from Hoorn were the first to sail around the southernmost tip of South America in 1616.
In the 18th century, the economy of the Dutch Republic gradually declined, and Hoorn lost its international position. Trade from then on focused on agricultural products and cattle.
Since the 1960s, when it was designated as a suburban development area, Hoorn became more and more of a commuter town of Amsterdam. This has gone at the expense of building extensive and rather boring suburbs. The city centre however has largely escaped restructuring, and is very well preserved. Today, Hoorn has some 70,000 inhabitants and remains an important regional centre.
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The region of West-Friesland
Hoorn is the largest town in the region of West-Friesland, an area that retains a number of distinctive characteristics. As its name betrays, it has historical links with the province of [wiki=a76ebed919d1196ee7a2ba5ec84a0836]Friesland[/wiki] on the eastern shore of the IJsselmeer. Its dialect is also closely related to the Frisian language. The region is geographically defined by its enclosure dike, the Westfriese Omringdijk, and covers an area of approximately 780km². It is a predominantly agricultural region, with characteristic bell-shaped farmhouses and typical linear villages. Apart from Hoorn, there are two more towns in the region, [wiki=3165ebfcda2aee6fe0223a078c97b7c3]Enkhuizen[/wiki] and [wiki=871cec26d0f374f642d583c0c182c2ce]Medemblik[/wiki] - the latter has remained very small. West-Friesland is one of the areas in the predominantly protestant north of the Netherlands where the Roman Catholic faith remained the most popular religion.
A typical custom of the region is luilak (although this is celebrated in other regions of North-Holland as well). On the Saturday before Pentecost, youngsters will make lots of noise in the early morning to wake up the population.
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