Utrecht › Places and landmarks
Oudegracht
Utrecht’s medieval canal, with its quays down at the water and the old cellars under the street now full of cafés.
Photo: Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Oudegracht runs right through the old town, from south to north. It was dug in the 12th and 13th centuries, and it has a feature no other Dutch canal has: the quays lie low, at the water, and the merchants dug cellars from them under the street to store their goods.
Those wharf cellars are now restaurants, cafés and workshops with terraces on the quays, and the street above runs over their roofs. You can see the canal best from one of its bridges, or from a boat. Visit it in 3D ›
More in Utrecht
Dom TowerThe tallest church tower in the Netherlands, 112 metres of Gothic brick and stone, standing on its own since a storm blew down the nave.
Dom ChurchWhat is left of Utrecht’s Gothic cathedral: the choir and transept, cut off from their tower since the nave fell in 1674.
PandhofThe quiet cloister garden beside the Dom Church, planted with the herbs of a medieval monastery garden.
JanskerkhofThe leafy square round the Janskerk, with a flower market every Saturday.
PieterskerkOne of the oldest churches in the Netherlands, a Romanesque church of 1048 with a crypt under its choir.
Museum SpeelklokA museum of self-playing music, from music boxes to great dance organs, inside the medieval Buurkerk.
AcademiegebouwThe main building of Utrecht University on the Domplein, where the Union of Utrecht was signed in 1579.
PaushuizeThe house on the Kromme Nieuwegracht built for Adrian of Utrecht, who became the only Dutch pope.
Museum CatharijneconventThe national museum of Christian art and history, in a medieval convent on the Oudegracht.
Centraal MuseumThe oldest city museum in the Netherlands, with the Utrecht painters of the Golden Age and the furniture of Gerrit Rietveld.
MiffyDick Bruna’s little white rabbit, born in Utrecht in 1955, who even has her own traffic lights in the town.