Audioguides Hoofddorp

Hoofddorp exists because of one of history's most audacious feats of hydraulic engineering. The Haarlemmermeer, a notoriously stormy inland lake that had been swallowing Dutch villages since the 17th century, was finally pumped dry between 1849 and 1852. Where fish had once swum, farmers planted tulips and potatoes, and Hoofddorp was founded in 1853 as the administrative heart of this new polder land. The grid of streets and drainage canals that criss-cross the municipality still follow the geometry of that original reclamation plan.

Today Hoofddorp sits in the shadow of Schiphol Airport, which means that on clear mornings you can watch Boeings climbing through the sky from the same fields where grain grew a century ago.

The city is part of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area and has a quietly prosperous, modern character. Fort Hoofddorp, set into the Geniedijk that forms part of the UNESCO-listed Defence Line of Amsterdam, is a reminder that this flat, open landscape has always been strategically valuable. The Haarlemmermeerse Bos, a thousand-hectare woodland park created on reclaimed land, gives the city breathing room that its airport-adjacent address might not suggest.