Haarlem

New York's Harlem neighborhood is named after this city. When Dutch settlers built a community north of New Amsterdam in 1658, they called it Nieuw Haarlem after their hometown. The name survived the centuries; the connection was largely forgotten.

Haarlem received city rights in 1245 and grew into a major brewing and trading center 17 kilometers west of Amsterdam. In December 1572, Spanish forces under Don Fadrique, son of the Duke of Alva, surrounded the city and laid siege.

Haarlem held out for seven months while its people starved. When the city surrendered in July 1573, the Spanish executed 1,500 of its defenders. Many were beheaded or tied back-to-back and drowned in the Spaarne River.

A widow named Kenau Simonsdochter Hasselaer organized hundreds of women to help repair the city walls during the siege. She became one of the most celebrated figures in Dutch history.

Haarlem's resistance bought William the Silent seven months to arm the rest of the Netherlands. The cities of Alkmaar and Leiden, inspired by what Haarlem endured, held firm and turned the tide of the Dutch revolt against Spain.

After the Spanish left in 1577, the Golden Age transformed Haarlem into a major art center. Frans Hals spent most of his life here, painting merchants and civic guards with a brushstroke so energetic it later influenced Monet and Manet. His work fills the museum that still bears his name.

In the 1630s, Haarlem sat at the center of tulip mania, the world's first recorded financial bubble. A single bulb sold for more than an Amsterdam townhouse. The market crashed in February 1637 when an auction here found no buyers at any price.

Stand inside the Grote Kerk and look up at the Müller organ, built in 1738 with 5,000 pipes. Handel traveled to Haarlem just to play it. Mozart sat at its keys at age 10.

Explore the narrow streets and look for doorways hiding hofjes, the city's secret courtyard gardens tucked behind ordinary facades. Stop into Jopenkerk, a former church converted into a working brewery. Visit the Teylers Museum, the oldest in the Netherlands, and see its original fossil and mineral collections displayed in its 18th-century Oval Hall.