The cheese capital — Netherlands' oldest cheese market and canal-ring city
Alkmaar has hosted a traditional cheese market every Friday morning from April to September since the 14th century — cheese carriers in white uniforms and straw hats run the wheels of Gouda and Edam across the market square in a ceremony unchanged for 600 years. The city itself is a handsome North Holland canal ring town with a remarkable weighing house (1582), a Great Church with a famous organ, and one of the best beer museums in the Netherlands. The resistance to Spanish forces in 1573 — the Siege of Alkmaar — gave the Dutch a crucial early victory in the Eighty Years' War.
Alkmaar received city rights in 1254 and grew wealthy on cheese and grain trade. The Siege of Alkmaar in 1573, when the town held out against a Spanish army for seven weeks until the Spanish withdrew, became a turning point in the Dutch Revolt — it was the first major Dutch victory and gave rise to the saying 'At Alkmaar begins victory.' The cheese market, formalised in the 15th century, made the city famous across Europe; merchants came from as far as England and the Baltic to buy North Holland cheese. The city avoided WWII bombing and preserves its 16th and 17th-century street plan largely…