Delft

Sister cities

• Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames
• Freiberg
• Aarau
• Pretoria
• Castrop-Rauxel
• City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality
• Adapazarı
• Tuzla
• Kfar Saba

History

The city of Delft came into being beside a canal, the 'Delf', which comes from the word delven, meaning to delve or dig, and this led to the name Delft. At the elevated place where this 'Delf' crossed the creek wall of the silted up river Gantel, a Count established his manor, probably around 1075. Partly because of this, Delft became an important market town, the evidence for which can be seen in the size of its central market square. Having been a rural village in the early Middle Ages, Delft developed into a city, and on 15 April 1246, Count Willem II granted Delft its city charter. Trade and industry flourished. In 1389 the Delfshavensche Schie canal was dug through to the river Maas, where the port of Delfshaven was built, connecting Delft to the sea. Until the 17th century, Delft was one of the major cities of the then county (and later province) of Holland. In 1400, for example, the city had 6,500 inhabitants, making it the third largest city after Dordrecht (8,000) and Haarlem (7,000). By 1560, Amsterdam and Utrecht with about 28,000 inhabitants, had become the largest cities, followed by Delft, Leiden and Haarlem, which each had around 14,000 inhabitants. In 1536, a large part of the city was destroyed by the great fire of Delft. The town's association with the House of Orange started when William of Orange (Willem van Oranje), nicknamed William the Silent (Willem de Zwijger), took up residence in 1572 in the former Saint-Agatha convent (subsequently called the Prinsenhof). At the time he was the leader of growing national Dutch resistance against Spanish occupation, known as the Eighty Years' War. By then Delft was one of the leading cities of Holland and was equipped with the necessary city walls to serve as a headquarters. In October 1573, an attack by…