Gouda received municipal rights in the 13th century under the reign of Count Floris V (who met his death in 1296 at the hands of his own nobles). Today the city’s chief fame rests on its world famous orange coloured cheese and unusual clay pipes. The Gouda cheeses, weighing up to 40 kilos apiece, are sold in a market held every Thursday morning.

Unlike the Alkmaar market where the cheeses are transported by special cheese porters, the Gouda cheeses are stacked high in brightly coloured farm wagons. As for the other typical Gouda product, the clay pipe, there is a special museum in the city called the De Moriaan Museum filled with exhibits of the long white pipes we are accustomed to seeing in Dutch paintings. One of the numerous factories which manufactured these pipes, the Goedewaagen Company, is famous for their intriguing “mystery pipes”. When brand-new, they are pure white, but they darken with use until a design, unknown to the buyer at the moment of purchase, appears on the bowl of the pipe.

Gouda also has many architectural monuments of which two really stand out: the old City Hall and the Church of Sint Janskerk (St. John ‘s). The old City hall was built between 1447 and 1450 in the High Gothic style. Every half hour its colourful carillon comes to life with figures which illustrate the conferral of municipal rights upon Gouda. The church of St. John was erected later, in 1485, in the late Gothic style, but was rebuilt as a basilica after a fire destroyed it in 1652. The church is aglow with 70 celebrated Gothic stained glass windows, the masterpiece of the two brothers, Dirk and Wouter Crabeth, who crafted them.

The windows were carried out in two campaigns; when the church was still consecrated to the Catholic cult and then after the Reformation had taken place. The earliest group, comprising twelve in all, dates back to 1555-1573. In the 25th window showing the liberation of the city of Leiden, there is a portrait of William the Silent who donated window number 22 to the cathedral. His long-standing rival, Philip II of Spain, not to be outdone, thus donated not one, but two. He is depicted together with his wife, Mary Tudor, in the window portraying the Last Supper.