Amsterdam's more gracious neighbour — where the Gothic Grote Kerk shelters Frans Hals's grave under its choir and Handel tested its organ, the Dutch Golden Age produced the greatest school of portrait painters in history within these canal-side streets, and the spring tulip fields between here and the North Sea bulb farms make the entire flatlands bloom for six weeks in pink and yellow
Haarlem (165,000) is the capital of North Holland province, 20km west of Amsterdam — a Dutch Golden Age canal city that feels exactly like Amsterdam must have felt before tourism. The Grote Kerk (Church of St. Bavo, Gothic, begun 1370 CE) dominates the Grote Markt with a nave 46m high; Frans Hals (c. 1582–1666), the most influential Dutch portrait painter of the Golden Age, is buried beneath the choir and his life's work is preserved in the Frans Hals Museum. The Keukenhof bulb fields and the North Holland tulip fields, in bloom from late March through early May, are 10–15km south and west of…
Haarlem was granted city rights around 1245 and by the 16th century had become a centre of textile manufacturing — linen, wool, and the famous Haarlem cotton printing industry that gave the word 'Harlem' (via Dutch settlers) to the New York neighbourhood. The Haarlem School of Golden Age painting (17th century) produced Frans Hals, Judith Leyster, and Jan de Bray — masters of portrait, genre, and still-life whose style of loose, spontaneous brushwork fundamentally influenced Rembrandt and the entire subsequent tradition of European portraiture. Haarlem's organ-building tradition produced thre…