On Friday mornings in season, waxed rounds of kaas (cheese) are ceremoniously stacked on the main square. Soon, porters appear in colourful cheese-guild hats, and dealers in white smocks insert a hollow rod to extract a cheese sample, and sniff and crumble to check fat and moisture content. Once deals are struck, the porters whisk the cheeses on wooden sledges to the old cheese scale. It's primarily for show but as living relics go it's both fascinating and entertaining.
Kaasmarkt
Lonely Planet's must-see attractions
19.72 MILES
This wonderful museum traces Van Gogh's life and artistic development via the world's largest collection of his work. More than 200 canvases are on…
19.47 MILES
Attracting over 12 million visitors per year, Amsterdam’s favorite playground is the green expanse of Vondelpark, with its 116 acres (47 hectares) of…
18.62 MILES
Visiting the Anne Frank Huis is one of Amsterdam's most profound experiences. Tragically, of the 107,000 Jewish adults and children deported from the…
19.64 MILES
The Netherlands’ top treasure house, the Rijksmuseum (pronounced ‘rikes’), is among the world's finest art museums. With over 1.5km of galleries, it packs…
19.21 MILES
Housed in Rembrandt's former home on lively Jodenbreestraat, this evocative museum provides an unparalleled insight into one of the Netherlands’ greatest…
23.52 MILES
This captivating museum consists of two sections, 300m apart: open-air Buitenmuseum, with more than 130 rebuilt and relocated dwellings and workshops, and…
19.5 MILES
Formerly a branch of St Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum, H'Art Museum cut ties with Russia and now operates as an independent museum.
19.49 MILES
The museum of the Dutch Resistance brings the horror of German occupation in WWII vividly alive, using personal stories, letters, artefacts, films and…
Nearby attractions
0.02 MILES
Built as a chapel in the 14th century, the Waaggebouw was pressed into service as a weigh house two centuries later. This handsome building houses the…
0.02 MILES
Housed in the former weigh house the Waaggebouw, the Dutch Cheese Museum has a reverential display of cheese-making utensils, photos and paintings…
0.05 MILES
Housed in the atmospheric old De Boom brewery, the Nationaal Biermuseum has a decent collection of beer-making equipment and wax dummies showing how the…
0.19 MILES
A local landmark, Alkmaar's Stadhuis was built between 1509 and 1520 in Gothic style. Additions over the ensuing years include a Dutch Classicist wing in…
0.3 MILES
Alkmaar's Grote Kerk is renowned for its organs. The most famous is the little 'Swallow Organ' (1511) in the north ambulatory. The 17th-century organ…
0.32 MILES
The Stedelijk Museum's collection of oil paintings by Dutch Masters, including impressive life-sized portraits of Alkmaar nobles, is alone worth the entry…
4.1 MILES
The waterlogged area north of Alkmaar was once home to 15,000 tiny, yet productive, farms, each one an island, whose farmers tended their crops by rowboat…
11.32 MILES
The impressive Zaans Museum traces windmill history from the very first mills and covers Dutch culture and costume; there's also a painting by Monet, who…