A journey through the history of Arnhem

We spent the last few days in The Netherlands as recently it was my father's-in-law as well as my sister's-in-law birthdays, and we were supposed to celebrate altogether. In the end, there was no celebration as everyone except of me and my husband was sick. On Saturday morning, instead of sitting at home and watching TV we spontaneously decided to go to Arnhem. Well, I decided and my husband was not too thrilled about it, but I convinced him by suggesting that we could invite his aunt and cousin who live there to join us for lunch. Little did I know at that time that they were sick too! We didn't have any plan and we ended up alone, but it still turned out to be a great day!

I have never been to the old town of Arnhem, so I was excited to explore it. It took us about an hour to get there and when we parked our car I was again reminded that parking in The Netherlands is more expensive than in Zurich!

We started our walk at Kerkplein which is dominated by The Eusebius Church. When we saw the glass balcony high above us we couldn't resist entering the church.

To be honest, I didn't find Arnhem as charming as other Dutch cities. There were many new buildings mixed with the old ones, so it looked like a patchwork to me. I prefer when the old town is kept as it used to be, but I also understand the need for renovation and modernization. And it was clean! When I told my husband what I thought what do you think he did? He said: Well, I told you so 😊

There is a cute square in front of the church with restaurants, outdoor benches and tables and ever present bicycles. I was surprised that there were not so many people in the city as Saturdays are usually packed, and you have to watch out not to get hit by a bike.

As soon as we entered The Eusebius Church we realized that it's not an active church. This could be fun!

Let's go inside!

The entrance to the church is free, but it costs 16 EUR per person when you want to visit the archeological excavations and the tower. You will also get an audio guide which is fairly simple to handle. You have to point it to designated spots to start the tour, and then enjoy. The information that I will share here is from our audio guide tour.

The Eusebius Church is the oldest church in Arnhem. It stands in a place of a Romanesque church which was built in the 9th century. Arnhem as well as the church were heavily impacted and left in ruins during the World War II. And suddenly, all those new buildings made sense. The audio guide will take you through this horrific part of the history.

Towards the end of the war, the church was heavily damaged and most of it was burned down. During continuous bombing, the tower collapsed and fell inside of the church. It was a great tragedy, but luckily, the restoration work started right after the war and the tower was rebuilt.

Today, the church hosts a permanent exhibition The Glory of Gelre which will take you through the 15th and 16th century when Arnhem had an important role in Europe.

The original organ from the 18th century was destroyed during the bombing. It's interesting that the new organ actually comes from the same period. It was installed after the war when it was donated to the Eusebius Church by another church that was closed down.

Not that the religious or historical value of this place wasn't important, but look at the lights! They don't fit in the church, but at the same time they fit in the church perfectly, if you know what I mean 😊

The nave and the aisles are of impressive size, and the large windows let a lot of light inside which makes the church look even bigger.

The church bells are more than 500 years old! The biggest one was gifted to the church by Charles II, Duke of Guelders in 1503. You might wonder why they are not in the tower, but lie on the floor. They were brought crashing down when the tower collapsed.

And exactly in this spot I almost broke my neck!

Until the beginning of the 19th century, important people of the city were buried in the church. Being important was actually not enough, as you had to have a lot of money to afford to pay for a grave inside of the church.

I'm used to such graves as this is not the only church where I saw them, but this is the first grave which is so textured that I stumbled upon it. My funny husband couldn't not comment and told me that in the worst case scenario they could have put me there too!

The centerpiece of the nave is the grave monument of Charles II who was the most powerful duke of Gelderland.

I think one of the most precious items in the church is the armor which Charles II wore in the 15th century! It's place high above our heads.

As any other medieval church, the Eusebius church was adorned with colorful paintings. This is the only original mural that has survived until today.

Let's go to the second part of the church: The vault!

A short metal staircase led us to the archaeological excavation site where we could see the original walls of the church from the 9th century as well as artifacts found during the restoration work.

These pieces of the construction were found during the work. Most of them were found after the tower collapsed, but some of them were simply removed during the reconstruction as they were worn out. They won't be placed into their original position, but they are too precious to be thrown away.

As I mentioned previously, the rich and important people were buried in the church and their skeletons are still there.

The city made good money from selling graves inside of the church, but the space was limited, and therefore when there was no family left to pay for the grave the bones ended up in a bone pit together.

This place gives me chills, so let's go to the tower!

The Eusebius church is the only church in Europe with a lift in the tower! Lift

First you will get to the 7th floor which is 90 meters above the ground, then you go one floor down to the glass balconies, and the last stop is on the 1st floor where you will watch a movie about a war battle in Arnhem. I have no idea what is on the 2nd to the 5th floor and I was so nervous that I didn't ask.

The lift has a capacity of 8 people and you can look outside because of its glass walls. This didn't help much with my fear of heights and slight claustrophobia I must say. And it was so fast! We were at the top in no time!

I was glad that it was not a balcony, but a closed room with windows around it. We enjoyed 360 degrees views of Arnhem.

Each window had a model if the most important building/activity in that direction.

This is the same Rhine that we have in Switzerland, just much bigger and dirtier 😊

The city that we see today is much different to the city from before the war. Large parts of Arnhem were damaged or destroyed...

After the tower collapsed, many residents felt that it should be rebuilt just as it was, however the council had another idea and held a design competition. There were four submissions, three of them we can see here.

And the winner!

A proof that I really made it all the way up 😊

Afterwards we waited for ages for the lift to go to the 6th floor. It was literally just a couple of meters down, but you need to take the lift for the safety reasons. When we got there I got somehow frozen as it was an open space, and there was so much wind! Also, we needed to walk a few floors down to the glass balconies which was terrifying.

We were on the platform 80 meters above the ground, surrounded by a safety net...

We walked around the floor, but I couldn't make myself walk down to the balconies because I really didn't feel comfortable there. I had to leave as soon as possible before I started to panic. My husband was not interested in the glass balconies at all, so he agreed to go down. I convinced myself that the photos wouldn't be good anyway as the glass was greenish, so it was not worth it.

We waited for the lift for what fell like an eternity, but we had a nice view 😊

I calmed myself down a bit on the way to the 1st floor, but I promised myself to do a proper research before I do something like that again.

We entered a dark room with a projector. We pressed a button to start the story about The Battle of Arnhem which resulted in destroying the church as well as the city. There were stories from soldiers as well as civilians who were hiding in the basements listening to explosions.

Before we left, we went to the city shop which is located in the church too. As you know I like to look up, and that's when I noticed the human-like figures hanging there.

After the excursion we were hungry, so we walked through the city to the restaurant. I loved the design of some of its buildings.

It didn't take us long to get to Konijnenvoer which literally translates to the rabbit food. It's a vegan restaurant (if you didn't get it from the name) and we couldn't wait to enjoy our meal.

We were welcomed by chic and cozy ambience. It's such a pretty place!

And we were lucky to get a table at the window, so we enjoyed the views too.

Yes, I had to get a detail of those flowers 😊

And the food... in two words: SUPER DELICIOUS! I could eat like that everyday. I had a seasonal soup with Korean chili paste Gochujang and truffle arancini. And my husband had local bitterballen and pasta with ragout.

We were gone almost all day, so we had to go back to check on our patients. They were all in bed and didn't need anything, so we went to the cinema in the evening. It was not a bad day at all!

Thank you for reading!

Cheers,
Martina