Haarlemse Kerstmarkt

Hundreds of stalls fill the old town of Haarlem for three days, and all of them lead back to this square. The Grote Markt has been the centre of the city for eight hundred years, and almost everything around you has a story.

Start with the town hall on the west side. It began in the twelfth century as a palace of the Counts of Holland, and some thirteenth-century beams are still inside. Across from it stands the church: the Grote Kerk, Saint Bavo's, finished in the early fifteen hundreds with a cedar roof completed in 1538. Inside is the Müller organ, built between 1735 and 1738. When it was finished it was the largest organ in the world. Handel played it. Mendelssohn played it. And in 1766 a ten-year-old boy on a tour of Europe played it: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Up in the tower hang two small bells called the Damiaatjes. The legend says Haarlem knights brought them back from Egypt during the Crusades. The truth is that a bell founder from Aalst gave them to the bishop in 1562. Either way, for centuries they rang every evening from nine until half past, the signal that the city gates were closing. If you hear bells at nine tonight, that is what they mean.

Next to the church is the Vleeshal, the meat hall, built in 1603 and far too grand for selling meat, which was rather the point. And in the middle of the square stands Laurens Janszoon Coster, the printer Haarlem insists invented movable type before Gutenberg did. The statue went up in 1856. The argument is still going.

One thing to look for: on the Sunday afternoon, when the square is shoulder to shoulder, step into the church. It is quiet, it is warm, and the organ is right there.