Utrecht is a his­tor­ic city with roots in the Middle Ages. In recent dec­ades, how­ever, numer­ous new build­ings have been implanted, turn­ing Utrecht into a dynam­ic mix of old and new. The city is a little Ams­ter­dam — with few­er tour­ists, but pop­u­lated by stu­dents and criss-crossed by an incred­ibly well-developed cyc­ling infrastructure.

A typo­lo­gic­al pecu­li­ar­ity in the city centre are the so-called wer­fkeld­ers: cel­lars that provide dir­ect access to the canals. Today, they make up the spe­cial charm of Utrecht’s old city centre. The old town centre has seen some inter­est­ing trans­form­a­tion and new con­struc­tion pro­jects in recent dec­ades, includ­ing the Tivoli Vre­den­burg music centre and the former main post office, which has been con­ver­ted into the pub­lic lib­rary. Bey­ond the old city centre, Utrecht boasts the largest rail­way sta­tion in the Neth­er­lands, includ­ing a bicycle gar­age with 12,000 spaces, and the ori­gin­al res­id­en­tial dis­trict of Wisselspoor.