Maastricht

Maastricht has been continuously inhabited for two thousand years. The city has a long and eventful history as witnessed by the numerous historic buildings and art treasures in churches and museums.
The city gained international fame through the Treaty of Maastricht (1992), which created the European Union in its current form and paved the way for the introduction of the euro as a European currency.

In the rest of the Netherlands the city is often seen as “foreign“, mainly because of its peripheral location near Belgium and Germany, but also because of the atypical landscape, the Maasland house construction, the deviant history, the complicated language situation, the dominance of Catholicism, the strong emphasis on community life (fanfares, carnival, processions) and the alleged Burgundian way of life.