Netherlands
Delft
Vermeer's home town and the source of Delft blue, in a canal centre small enough to walk across in an afternoon.
A small canal town wedged between The Hague and Rotterdam, and the place that gave the world Delft blue and Johannes Vermeer. The centre is a tight grid of water, lime trees and leaning gables around a market square with a church tower at either end. A large technical university keeps it from being a museum piece: bikes, students and terraces fill streets the seventeenth century laid out.
Suggested stay
1–3 days
Language
Dutch
Currency
EUR
Timezone
UTC+2
Why you'll love Delft
The canals Oude Delft is the oldest canal in the country, and the humpbacked bridges, lime trees and gabled houses leaning over the water still read as the seventeenth century built them.
Two towers The Nieuwe Kerk holds the tomb of William of Orange and the royal vault beneath it; the Oude Kerk leans visibly over its own canal and keeps Vermeer's grave.
Delft blue The blue-and-white earthenware is named for this town, and one seventeenth-century factory here still paints every piece by hand.
Small and central Everything is ten minutes on foot, and The Hague and Rotterdam are each about a quarter of an hour away by train.
Best time to visit
Apr-Oct
14-23° days
51.999° N, 4.363° E
UTC+2 · Europe/Amsterdam
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Weather & when to go to Delft
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr-Oct
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Delft
December and January are the low point: grey, wet, and dark by mid-afternoon, when the canals look their least appealing and there is little reason to be outside. The museums carry those months. In high summer, coach day-trippers fill a very small centre from late morning, so the early hour is the calm one.
Top things to do in Delft
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Nieuwe Kerk - climb the tower over the Markt
history scenic 👍 PopularThe tower at the head of the market square is the second tallest in the country, and a long, narrowing spiral stair ends with Delft's roofs below and The Hague and Rotterdam on either horizon. Inside the church is the black-and-white marble tomb of William of Orange, with the royal vault of the House of Orange-Nassau sealed beneath it.
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Markt - the square between church and town hall
culture arts history 👍 PopularOne long cobbled rectangle with the Nieuwe Kerk at one end and the Renaissance town hall facing it down the other, terraces along both sides and a general market taking over the whole space on Thursdays. It is where you end up between everything else, which is the point.
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Oude Kerk - the leaning tower and Vermeer's grave
history culture arts 👍 PopularThe older church sits right on the canal and its brick tower leans plainly out of true, enough that it is the first thing anyone photographs. Inside are the graves of Vermeer, the microscopist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek and the admiral Piet Hein, under a good set of Delft-made stained glass.
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Museum Prinsenhof - where William of Orange was shot
history culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedA former convent that became the prince's residence during the revolt against Spain, and the room where he was assassinated in 1584. The bullet holes are still in the stairwell wall, behind glass. The rest is a well-told museum of the Dutch revolt, the town's Golden Age and its potters.
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Royal Delft - the last of the old potteries
culture arts shopping ⭐ Highly recommendedDe Porceleyne Fles, founded in 1653, is the only survivor of the dozens of Delftware factories that once worked the town, and still paints by hand. The tour runs through the kilns and the archive, and you can watch a painter put a brush to a raw white glaze.
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Oude Delft - walk the country's oldest canal
scenic historyThe canal the town was dug around, running the length of the western centre under double rows of limes, with merchant houses, the leaning church tower and a string of low bridges. Fifteen slow minutes end to end, and the best of Delft is done on foot along it.
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Oostpoort - the last of the city gates
history scenicTwo brick towers with pointed roofs standing over the water at the eastern edge of the old town, all that is left of the medieval walls and about six hundred years old. There is nothing to do there but look at it from the bridge, reflected, which is what everybody does.
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Vermeer Centrum - the painter's life, not his paintings
culture arts historyBe clear about what this is: full-size reproductions of every Vermeer, plus a good account of his technique, his patrons and the town he painted. No originals hang in Delft. Worth an hour before or after you go and see the real ones in The Hague.
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Canal cruise - Delft from the water
scenicLow open boats work a loop of the old canals from the centre, ducking under bridges built for barges rather than tourists. About three quarters of an hour, and the angle explains the town better than any map: the water came first and the streets were fitted around it.
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TU Delft campus - the grass-roofed library
culture arts scenicThe university's library is a wedge of lawn you can walk up, with a steel cone punched through the middle of it, and the campus around it is a run of serious modern architecture. The Science Centre nearby is a good hour with children.
Best areas to stay in Delft
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Binnenstad
First-time visitors $$Cobbled market square, terraces, church towers
Explore hotels in Binnenstad →
Oude Delft and the western canals
Quiet canal stays $$$Quiet old canals, gabled merchant houses
Explore hotels in Oude Delft and the western canals →
Wippolder and TU Delft
Students and long stays $Student campus quarter, modern and busy
Explore hotels in Wippolder and TU Delft →
Delftse Hout
Families and campers $Lakeside woods and holiday park
Explore hotels in Delftse Hout →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Delft
Getting to & around Delft
Getting there
Fly into Schiphol, then a direct train south to Delft in about fifty minutes, arriving at a station under the old town.
Flight
Amsterdam Schiphol (AMS)
Trains run from the platforms beneath the terminal, and the intercity services towards Rotterdam call at Delft directly, taking roughly fifty minutes. The platforms here are in a tunnel below the old town, so you come up into a canal-side station hall with the Markt about ten minutes ahead on foot.
Train
Delft station
Several trains an hour from Amsterdam, Leiden and Dordrecht, with Rotterdam about twelve minutes away and The Hague about ten.
Bus and train
Rotterdam Centraal
Rotterdam The Hague Airport is much closer than Schiphol but small; a bus links it to the metro and the central station, then one short hop by train.
Ferry
Hoek van Holland
North Sea ferries from Harwich land at the coast west of the city; the metro line from the harbour runs to Schiedam, then a few minutes by train.
Getting around
On foot
The old centre is a few hundred metres across, and almost nothing worth seeing is outside it.
Free
Bike
Flat, well laned and the local default; rental shops and station bikes sit right by the platforms.
TBC
Tram
Line 1 runs through town and on to The Hague and the beach at Scheveningen; line 19 serves the university campus.
TBC
Bus
Regional buses fill in towards Rotterdam, Zoetermeer and the villages, mostly from beside the station.
TBC
Day trips from Delft
The Hague
Full daySeat of government
The Mauritshuis is the reason to go: Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and his View of Delft hang there, a quarter of an hour from the town in the painting. Add the Binnenhof, the Escher museum and, in warm weather, the pier and long sand at Scheveningen.
Getting there
train
About 10 min by train
Rotterdam
Full dayModern architecture
Bombed flat in 1940 and rebuilt as the least Dutch-looking city in the Netherlands: the cube houses, the arched Markthal, the Erasmus Bridge and a working port you can ride a water taxi through. A hard, useful contrast with Delft's gables.
Getting there
train
About 12 min by train
Kinderdijk
Full dayWindmill landscape
Nineteen eighteenth-century windmills lined along the dykes of a polder that is still drained the way they built it, and a UNESCO site for exactly that reason. Two mills are open as houses inside. Best by bike along the dyke path once you arrive.
Getting there
train | ferry
About 1 hr 15 min via Rotterdam by train and waterbus
Leiden
Half dayUniversity canal town
Delft's older, larger cousin: rings of canals, the country's oldest university, Rembrandt's birthplace and a national antiquities museum with a full Egyptian temple in it. The botanical garden is where the first tulips in the Netherlands were grown.
Getting there
train
About 25 min by train
Keukenhof and the bulb fields
Full daySpring flower gardens
The flower gardens open for roughly eight weeks from late March, with millions of bulbs planted in blocks and the commercial fields striped in colour around them. Open only in that window, mobbed at weekends, and genuinely worth the journey once.
Getting there
train | bus
About 1 hr 15 min by train to Leiden, then the bulb-field bus
Gouda
Half dayCheese market town
A Gothic town hall standing alone in the middle of the market square, the weigh house where the cheese was traded, and a church with the best sixteenth-century stained glass in the country. The costumed cheese market on summer mornings is pure theatre.
Getting there
train
About 45 min by train via Rotterdam or The Hague
A little history of Delft
Delft began as a ditch. A canal cut through the peat around the eleventh century gave the settlement its name and its shape, and a town charter followed in 1246. Cloth, and then beer on a serious scale, paid for the gabled houses along the water; a chamber of the Dutch East India Company added colonial money in the seventeenth century. A great fire in 1536 cleared much of the medieval town, which is why so much of the centre is brick.
William of Orange made Delft his base during the revolt against Spain and was shot dead in the Prinsenhof in 1584. Breda was in enemy hands, so he was buried here, and the Nieuwe Kerk has been the vault of the Dutch royal family ever since. The town's Golden Age gave it Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, Carel Fabritius, the blue-and-white pottery that copied Chinese porcelain and took the town's name, and the draper Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who ground lenses good enough to see bacteria. An engineering academy founded in 1842 became the technical university that now dominates the southern half of the town.
Count William II grants Delft its town charter.
A great fire destroys much of the medieval town.
William of Orange is assassinated in the Prinsenhof and buried in the Nieuwe Kerk.
Delft becomes one of the six chambers of the Dutch East India Company.
De Porceleyne Fles is founded, the pottery that survives today as Royal Delft.
The Delft Thunderclap: a gunpowder store explodes, flattening a quarter of the town and killing Fabritius.
Vermeer dies in debt, leaving around thirty-five paintings.
A royal academy for engineers opens, later becoming TU Delft.
The railway moves into a tunnel and the viaduct through the town is removed.
Know before you go
Payment
Cards everywhere
English
Everywhere
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type C / F
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+31
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
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FAQs about Delft
▸ When is the best time to visit Delft?
April to October, with late spring the pick: long light on the canals, terraces open, and the bulb fields north of here at their peak in April and May. December and January are wet, grey and dark early, which turns the trip into a museum day.
▸ How many days do you need in Delft?
The town itself is a full day, comfortably. Give it two or three nights only if you plan to use it as a base, which works well: The Hague, Rotterdam, Leiden and Gouda are all short train rides, and beds here are calmer than in any of them.
▸ Can you see Vermeer's paintings in Delft?
No. Not one original hangs in the town. The View of Delft and the Girl with a Pearl Earring are in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, ten minutes away by train, and more are in Amsterdam. Delft has his grave in the Oude Kerk and a study centre of reproductions.
▸ Is the Delft blue in the shops actually made here?
Often not. Much of the souvenir version is mass-produced elsewhere and printed rather than painted. Royal Delft is the one seventeenth-century factory still working in the town, and hand-painted pieces carry a maker's mark on the base, so turn things over before buying.
▸ Should I stay in Delft or Amsterdam?
Delft, if the south is your focus. It is quieter, cheaper for a bed and better placed for The Hague, Rotterdam and the coast, and Amsterdam is still only about an hour by train. Choose Amsterdam if its museums and nightlife are the reason for the trip.
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