Did you know ...

that the deepest point in Holland lies seven metres below sea level?

That said, the Dutch have dried up huge areas of land and continue to reclaim new areas from the water. More than half of the province of North Holland alone consists of reclaimed areas. At the same time the South province is the most densely populated and industrialised region in the whole of the Netherlands. How this came to be so is made clear by the Holland Route, one of the regional routes along the European Route of Industrial Heritage. Today the museum in the old De Cruquius pumping station shows how three steam-driven water drawing machines reclaimed an area of more than 18.000 hectares from Lake Haarlem.