Veere is a municipality with a population of 22,000 and a town with a population of 1,500 in the southwestern Netherlands, in the region of Walcheren in the province of Zeeland. The area of the municipality of Veere is 13,496 hectares, with a coastline of 34 kilometres.
As a result of the damming of the Veerse Gat inlet in 1961, the fishing fleet of Veere moved to a new home port at Colijnsplaat on Noord-Beveland. As of 2013 the main business of the town is tourism. Veere municipality reached its current expanded shape in 1997, after the addition of several neighboring towns. During the course of nearly two centuries seventeen historical municipalities have merged to become present-day Veere. Its original full name was Veere-de-Stad en Zanddijk-Binnen.
The area is visited by 4 million tourists annually. The main attractions are the beaches and marinas. The Storm Surge Barrier on the Oosterschelde is the most popular visitor attraction in Zeeland. The Scoutcentrum Zeeland on the coast of the Veerse Meer attracts Scout visitors from around the world.
The town of Veere forms the setting for “Van Loon’s Lives“, a book of contemporary fantasy written by Hendrik Willem Van Loon in 1942, in which the protagonists are able to magically summon the great men and women of history for weekend dinner parties, leading to often humorous incidents. The book was written at the time when Veere, like the rest of the Netherlands, lay under Nazi occupation, and despite its light-hearted tone clearly indicates the longing of the writer – living in the US – for his homeland whose liberation he was doomed never to see.
[caption id="attachment_214542" align="aligncenter" width="491"] Christopher Columbus by Sebastiano del Piombo[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer and navigator who completed four voyages across the ...
