A star in the marsh
Transcript
From the ground, Bourtange looks like a pretty village: a church, a windmill, brick houses around a small square. From the air it is a star. Five points, two rings of water, and a single road in. Nothing about this place is accidental.
In the 1580s the Dutch were fighting Spain, and the city of Groningen was in Spanish hands. There was exactly one road through the marshes between Groningen and Germany, and it ran over a strip of sand called Bourtange. William of Orange ordered a fort built on that sand. It was finished in 1593, and the marsh did half the work: an army could only come at it along the one road, straight into the guns.
The Spanish tried, soon after it was finished, and failed. In 1672, the year the Dutch call the Disaster Year, the Bishop of Münster arrived with an army and demanded surrender. The commander, a Captain Protts, refused. The frontal assault broke on the ramparts and the bog. The fort was never taken.
Then the wars moved on, the marshes were drained, and the star stopped mattering. In 1851 the army gave it up and it became an ordinary village. The ramparts were ploughed, the moats silted, and for a century Bourtange was simply a place at the end of the road.
In 1960 the local council made an unusual decision. They would rebuild the whole fort as it looked around 1740 and turn it into a museum you could live in. So the star you are standing inside is both four hundred years old and sixty years old at the same time.
One thing to look for: before you leave, climb the rampart behind the stalls and look out over the water. In December, at dusk, you see what the Spanish soldiers saw. There is still only one road in.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
