Set off with the city guide

In the heart of Hattem, city guide Rob van Duinen points to a building that is now part of the Bakery Museum. "Besides being a fortified city, Hattem was also an agricultural town with as many as fifty farms," he explains. Once, hundreds of cows roamed the streets here, all owned by small-scale city farms.

This building, that has been preserved, is a rare example of this. The stable windows and old doors immediately reveal its original use. For Rob, history is tangible: "I was born upstairs there. As a little boy, I walked around here," he points to a building diagonally opposite the Bakery Museum. He remembers the sixties and pulls out a photo from his childhood. And although of course some things have changed, the resemblance remains. "The bakery museum actually symbolizes the farming history of Hattem," concludes Van Duinen as we stroll through the streets of Hattem.

The city guide then stops in front of a modern building on the corner of Adelaarshoek. “It might seem strange to imagine this now, but this used to be the gateway to the forecourt of ‘De Dikke Tinne’ castle.” Once, a castle with the thickest walls in the whole of the Netherlands, stood in Hattem. In the early 1400s, Duke Reinoud IV had a mighty castle built here that made enemies, such as the prisoner of war Jan van Wassenaer in his notorious cage, tremble. A replica of this cage can still be seen on Tinneplein. Although the castle was demolished in the eighteenth century, the past definitely has not disappeared.

The outlines of one of the large towers can be seen on Tinneplein. “The actual spot where it once stood has been indicated in the pavement, with a diameter of 21 meters with 7-meter-thick walls.” The city guide shows step by step that this is correct.

You can still feel the history when viewing Tinneplein, where a scale model showing what the castle looked like in the past will also be installed. “Making the invisible visible again,” says van Duinen.