Jaap van 't Veen's photos

Borger has the largest and the smallest hunebedden (dolmens or passage graves) in the Netherlands on its outskirts and no fewer than sixteen of Drenthe's dolmens in the immediate vicinity. The village is also home of the Hunebedcentrum , a museum telling the story of these mysterious megalith tombs and the people who built them. No doubt Borger is rightfully Hunebedhoofdstad (Hunebed Capital) of the Netherlands.

De Zwaluw (The Swallow) is a so called smock mill. The current mill is located nearby the hamlet Oudemolen - less than 30 houses and about 75 inhabitants - since 1837. It replaced a post mill which itself had replaced a watermill on the Drentsche Aa river. De Zwaluw is a three-storey smock mill on a single-storey brick base. There is no stage, the sails reaching almost to the ground. The smock and cap are thatched. The mill is winded by a tailpole and winch. From 1876 til 1947 the mill was owned by the Greving brothers, who lived in a small cottage near the mill. They milled for the bakers in the area and for the farmers who fed their cattle plenty of grain. The mill was out if use in 1970, but since 1980, the municipality of Tynaarlo is owner of the mill and after that it was subsequently thoroughly restored. Nowadays De Zwaluw has had a group of volunteer millers to run the mill (in principle the mill is open for the public on Saturdays). The mill is listed as a national Dutch monument.

Some autumnal pictures of the Dutch province of Drenthe.

Hunebedden (megalithic tombs) are the oldest monuments in the Netherlands. They were built more than 5.000 years ago in the last phase of the Stone Age by people of the Funnel Beaker Culture, who buried their dead in these hunebedden . The stones of which the dolmens are built are originating from Scandinavia. They were carried south by the advancing land ice during an ice age. When the ice melted, the stones that were carried along were left behind. Hunebed D8 was built between 3400 and 3100 BC and is attributed to the Funnelbeaker culture. It is a fairly large portal tomb with four capstones, eight side stones and two keystones. The hunebed is almost 8 metres long and 4.4 metres wide. The oldest mention dates from 1711.

For centuries the province of Drenthe was a poor and rural area. Over the last 200 years vast areas of peat were extracted and the population grew quickly from 40.000 to almost 500.000 people now. The Balloërveld (also named Ballooërveld) is one of the rare areas that remained more or less untouched. The heathland of the nature is interspersed with peat moors, pine woods and some small sand drifts. It is also home of a sheep herd. The Balloërveld, now managed by Staatsbosbeheer (a Dutch Forestry Commission), has an eventful history that even goes back to prehistoric times. The area originated in the Elster Ice Age. The Balloërveld also housed an important line of defence for the German occupiers in the World War II. The current nature area of 367 acres is part of National Park Drentse Aa.

The Chinese Garden - part of the Hortus Botanicus Haren was built in 1995 after an earlier visit of a Groningen trade mission to several cities in China. It is a historical reconstruction of a garden from the Ming period. The walled garden was designed a famous Chinese urban garden architect from Shaghai. Almost all the material used to build the Chinese Garden was shipped from China to the Netherlands, from the stones in the garden and the wood of the pavilions to the furniture of tea house. Chinese workers laid out the park largely by hand. The result of this cooperation between the Netherlands and Shanghai is the beautiful Chinese garden “The Hidden Kingdom of Ming”, which was officially opened by H.M. Queen Beatrix in 1995.

The Hortus Botanicus in Haren is one of the oldest and largest botanical gardens in the Netherlands. It was founded in 1626 by the pharmacist and botanist Henricus Munting and was originally situated in the city of Groningen. Because of space considerations it relocated to its current location; from 1929 on a new botanical graden was created on that site and became the largest botanical garden in the country. At the Hortus, which covers about 20 acres, there are a large number of very different gardens. Among others the garden consists of an arboretum, pinetum, English garden, a water garden, a rock garden, bamboo garden, a grass garden, agricultural gardens, and Celtic gardens. Since 1995 it also has a walled Chinese Garden . The Hortus was part of the University of Groningen and until the 1980s’ played an important role in the teaching and research of biology especially. Since 2002 a foundation is managing the gardens. We visited the Hortus in late October, so there were almost no flowers to be seen. We just could make a walk along trees and shrubs in beautiful autumn colours.

The Arvanitia Promenadeas is one of the most beautiful walks that Nafplion has to offer. It begins at the end of the small harbor next to the lighthouse and ends a distance of one kilometer reaching the square of Arvanitia next to the beach of Arvanitia. The route of Arvanitia is a paved path, with on one side the Argolic Gulf and on the other the rock walls of Acronafplia with flowers and lots of cactuses. On the second part of the promenade one has a beautiful view towards the imposing Palamidi fortress (PiP6). The name Arvanitia Promenade is due to the fact that Albanians had inhabited the area outside the walls of Nafplion since before the time of the first Venetian occupation.

In the 19th century Old Kardamyli - or Skardamoula as it was then called - was a fortified settlement of the Troupakides-Mourtzinos family. They asserted their sovereignty over neighbouring areas of the Mani-peninsula. The complex - with the Byzantine Agios Spyridon church and a clutch of abandoned fortified tower-houses (one of them nowadays is a museum) - is surrounded by a defensive wall and can be reached througd a large archway.

The Agios Ioannis church (Holy Metropolitan Church of St. John the Baptist of Messina) is the metropolitan church of the city of Messini. In 1986 during devastating earthquakes the church was badly damaged and eventually demolished. Today, a new large church with two large bell towers has been erected. The new church was built in the form of the previous one with some changes such as the dome, the second bell tower and the removal of the porch. The inauguration of the new church was held on October 17, 1993.

Nearby the Loukos monastery stands an old aqueduct bridge crossing a small ravine. The Roman aqueduct carried water from a spring located about one and half kilometer to the northwest. Its purpose was to supply water to the nearby villa of Herodes Atticus, one of the richest and most important Greeks at the time. The aqueduct was built during the second century, when Greece was under Roman rule. The water was rich in dissolved minerals and nowadays the brickwork of the aqueduct is completely covered with lime sinter.

Palamidi fortress is one of the most important and best-preserved castles in Greece, a beautiful example of Venetian architecture of the 18th century. It is located located on a 216 meters high hill above the city of Nafplion. The hill at which the castle is located was named after Palamidis, the hero of Homer’s Epics. The fortress was a very large and ambitious project, but was finished within a relatively short period from 1711 until 1714. It is a typical baroque fortress based on the plans of a Venetian engineer. In 1715, just one year after its completion, it was occupied by the Turks. During the Greek War of Independence - in 1822 - Palamidi was captured by the Greeks. The fortress commands an impressive The view from the fortress over Nafplion, the Argolic Gulf and the surrounfing county are just stunning

Rusty Dimitrios shipwreck is an imposing cargo ship that has been abandoned on Valtaki beach since 1981. It is believed that this ship was used for transporting illegal cigarettes between Turkey and Italy, however many refer to this ship as a ghost ship, of which the origins remain unknown.

Kefalari (nearby the town of Argos) is a well-known pilgrimage site for the Greek Orthodox people, due to the Zoodochos Pigi Church. The first church, built in 1634, was possibly the place where the miraculous image of the Holy Virgin was found. The church was destroyed in 1918 after an explosion in the German ammunition depots. That first church was called “Panagia Kefalariotissa”, meaning “Holy Virgin of Kefalari”. Half of the church was inside a cave. The explosion was survived only by the picture of the Holy Virgin and the altar. The people of Argos wanted to rebuild the church, and aided by the Greek immigrants of Argos in America, collected enough money to do it. In 1924, the new church was opened. In 1955 the bell tower of the church was built. In front of the church is a small pond, created by the waters of Erysinos.

Vathia - or Vatheia - is a traditional village in the southernmost tip of the Mani peninsula on the Peloponnese. The village was built from the mid 16th century. In the 19th century the village had about 300 inhabitants, who were mainly farmers and the olive harvest was their main occupation. At the beginning of the 20th century the inhabitants left the village due to poverty and at the end of the eighties of the last century there were hardly any people living there. Nowadays Vathia - often called a ghost town - is almost completely uninhabited. It has about 90 typical tower houses with the typical architecture of the Mani; most of them are empty and partly dilapidated, but in the meantime some have been renovated. The tower houses in Vathia are built like fortresses with two or three floors. The people, at one time, fiercely guarded their land and livelihoods, either from foreign invaders or rival families. The fortress-like houses provided the ideal opportunity to keep a lookout in the case of a potential invasion. The head of each household was considered to be a ‘mini warlord’, who had the interests of the family at the center of his concerns. The fierceness of the people, the rugged terrain and the strategic location of the tower houses helped keep Mani (and Vathia) free from invaders and it even maintained its independence from the Ottoman Empire.. Vathia is built on a hill top in the middle of an impressive landscape with beautiful sea views. It is located halfway between Areopoli and Cape Tenaro.

The picturesque village of Porto Kagio is located in a small bay nearby the southernmost tip of the Mani Peninsula, where the landscape is presented by high barren hills and indented coast with bays. It is the southernmost natural port of mainland Greece. The tiny village is far from civilization, making it peaceful and quiet. Right in front there is a small pebbly beach with crystal-clear waters. The village has always been a very important port. It was already mentioned in the 2nd century AD, when it was known as Psammathous. The modern name comes from the Venetian “Porto Quaglio” and the French (Frankish) “Port des Cailles” (Quail Port). Porto Kagio was the base of the pirate fleet of Lambros Katsonis. Lambros Katsonis sailed from port to port, looting Ottoman boats and trying to get the Greeks to start a revolution. During World War II, it was the place from which a significant number of British soldiers escaped to Egypt.

The history of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour - also knowns as Frankoklisia - probably began during the time of the Frankish occupation of Nafplio, when the church must have been used as a convent for Franciscan nuns. Shortly before the outbreak of the Greek revolutionin 1821, when Nafplio was still under Turkish control, the widow of the Aga-Pasha converted it into a mosque, as a memorial to her husband. In 1839, with the mediation of King Otto (the first king of the modern Greek state), the Municipality of Nafplio granted the mosque to the Catholic Church, for the ecclesiastical needs of the approximately three hundred Greek and foreign Catholics - mainly the Bavarian soldiers who belonged to the king's entourage. After repairs, the church was officially opened in 1840. The church has been in continuous operation from 1839 to the present day.

One of the must see sights in Areopoli is the dual church of Agios Charalambos and Panagia. The church - located in the centre of the town - offers frescoes dating back to 1869. It has an interesting stepped belfry with stone reliefs.