Delft is a town of about a hundred thousand people between The Hague and Rotterdam, and it is the most intact small historic centre in the Netherlands. The canals are lined with gabled houses, the two churches face each other across the old town, and the Oostpoort in the photograph at the top of this page is the only surviving city gate, a fifteenth-century brick structure with twin towers standing over the water where the walls once ran.
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Two things made Delft famous. Johannes Vermeer lived and worked here his whole life, painted the View of Delft and the Little Street here, and is buried in the Oude Kerk; his light is the town's light and the streets he painted are still there. And from the seventeenth century the town made tin-glazed earthenware in imitation of Chinese porcelain, which the world knows as Delft Blue, and one of the original factories still operates. The third photograph is a canal, which is what you will mostly be looking at.
What Is Here
The Markt is one of the great European squares and has a church at one end and a town hall at the other. The Nieuwe Kerk's tower is 108 metres, the second tallest in the Netherlands, and can be climbed for a view over the whole province; inside is the mausoleum of William of Orange, the founder of the Dutch state, who was assassinated in Delft in 1584, and the burial vault of the House of Orange-Nassau beneath it, where Dutch monarchs are still interred. The town hall opposite, in the second photograph, is a Renaissance front wrapped around a surviving medieval tower.
The Oude Kerk leans, visibly and considerably. Its seventy five metre tower is about two metres off vertical, having been built on the filled-in course of a canal, and the effect from the street is unmistakable. Vermeer is buried here, along with Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the Delft draper who ground his own lenses, discovered microorganisms and effectively invented microbiology.
On Vermeer, be clear about what exists and what does not. There is no Vermeer painting in Delft: the View of Delft is in The Hague, twenty minutes away, and the rest are scattered worldwide. What Delft has is the Vermeer Centrum, which is an interpretation centre with reproductions and context rather than originals, and the actual streets and light. The honest recommendation is to see the paintings at the Mauritshuis in The Hague and then walk here.
The Prinsenhof is the former convent where William of Orange was shot, now the municipal museum, with the bullet holes preserved in the stairwell wall. Royal Delft, the last of the original seventeenth-century potteries, runs factory tours and painting workshops and is the real thing rather than a souvenir shop. And the Science Centre at the technical university covers the other Delft: TU Delft is one of the leading engineering universities in Europe and the town has twenty seven thousand students, which is why the bars are busier than a historic centre suggests.
The canals themselves are the pleasure. The Oude Delft is claimed as the oldest canal in the Netherlands, the Voldersgracht and the Vrouwjuttenland are the quiet ones, and boat tours run from the Koornmarkt. The Thursday and Saturday markets fill the Markt.
When to Go
April to June and September, with late April for the specifically Dutch reason. Tulip season runs roughly mid-April to early May and Delft is twenty minutes from the Keukenhof gardens and the bulb fields around Lisse, which is the single biggest draw to this part of the country and the reason accommodation across the whole region is scarce and expensive in those weeks.
Summer runs eighteen to twenty three degrees and is pleasant rather than hot, with the canal terraces busy. King's Day, 27 April, is a national holiday and a street party, and in Delft it means a flea market along the canals and a great deal of orange.
Winter is three to eight degrees, grey and damp, with the damp penetrating in the usual Low Countries way. Delft is a good winter town because it is small and has indoor things in it, and the canals occasionally freeze hard enough to skate, which is now rare enough to be an event.
The academic year matters a little: July and August are quieter in the bars and the cheaper eating as the students leave.
Getting There
Amsterdam Schiphol is about an hour by direct train and Rotterdam The Hague Airport is much closer but has few routes. The train from Schiphol runs every fifteen minutes or so and this is the normal arrival.
Delft sits on the main line between The Hague and Rotterdam and both are about ten to fifteen minutes away, which is the fact that should shape your trip: you can base yourself in Delft, which is prettier and cheaper, and use both cities as day trips rather than the other way round. Amsterdam is about an hour, Utrecht about fifty minutes. The station is a short walk from the centre and is a striking modern building with the tracks buried underneath it and a Delft Blue tiled ceiling in the concourse.
Locally everything is walking or cycling. The centre is flat, compact and largely closed to through traffic, and Delft is a cycling town in the full Dutch sense, with bike parking at the station on an enormous scale and separated lanes everywhere. Hiring a bike is the normal thing to do and is how you reach the bulb fields and the coast at Kijkduin. A car is a liability in the centre.
Is Delft Safe for Women Travelers
The FCDO publishes no advised-against areas anywhere in the Netherlands. Its safety advice is nonetheless more substantial than most people expect of a country this orderly, and it states that terrorists are likely to try to carry out attacks in the Netherlands and that attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places visited by foreign nationals.
Delft is a very safe small town and among the easiest places in this batch for a woman travelling alone. It is prosperous, compact, flat, well lit and full of students, so the streets are populated into the evening. Violent crime against visitors is rare. The two things that matter here are the canals and the bicycles, and the advisory covers both.
The FCDO is unusually specific about where and how theft happens here, and the detail is the useful part. Pickpocketing and bag-snatching are common, particularly in central Amsterdam and around Amsterdam Central Station, and thieves often operate in gangs on the trains and trams to and from Schiphol airport, where one distracts you while another takes your bag. It names sleeping on trains as something that makes you an easy target, and it names a second method: thieves entering restaurants on the pretext of selling something or looking for someone, and taking bags while people are distracted. The resulting rules are concrete. Keep sight of your luggage especially while checking into a hotel, keep valuables on your person, do not hang a bag or a jacket on the back of a chair in a restaurant, and do not fall asleep on public transport.
The theft advice is written about Amsterdam and the part that applies in Delft is the train. The advisory names thieves operating in gangs on the trains and trams to and from Schiphol, and the Delft service runs on that line; it also names sleeping on trains as making you a target, which on a quiet forty minute run from the airport after a long flight is exactly the temptation. In Delft itself the risk is low and ordinary. Bicycle theft, which the advisory does not mention, is the one crime that is genuinely endemic in any Dutch town: use the lock that comes with a hired bike and the paid station parking rather than a canal railing.
People drown in Dutch canals every year and the FCDO says explicitly that it happens in Amsterdam and in canals elsewhere in the Netherlands. Its account of the cause is the part that matters: the majority of drownings happen after heavy drinking or smoking cannabis. Canal edges in the older Dutch towns typically have no railing, the stone is slippery, the water is deeper and colder than it looks and the walls are sheer with nothing to climb. Take care walking beside a canal at night, and note that in Amsterdam swimming in the canals carries a 160 euro fine, as does urinating in them.
Applied to Delft this matters more than it does in Amsterdam, not less. Amsterdam's canals are mostly fenced or kerbed in the busiest places. Delft's are not: the Oude Delft and most of the old town canals run flush with the street, with no railing at all, a sheer brick wall going straight down, no ladders for long stretches and water that is deeper and colder than it looks. Add the student bars and the fact that the lanes are narrow and partly unlit, and the FCDO's observation that the majority of Dutch canal drownings follow heavy drinking describes the exact situation available here on a Friday night. Walk on the house side of the street after dark, which is what residents do.
The real daily hazard in a Dutch city is the bicycle, and the rules are not the ones a visitor assumes. The FCDO states that cyclists and mopeds have right of way over motor vehicles and often ignore road traffic rules and red lights, and that trams have priority over everything, with a legal requirement to stop when a tram or bus halts in the middle of the road to let passengers off. Cycle paths are busy, they are a road rather than a pavement, and standing in one to take a photograph is the single most common way a visitor gets hit. Look for cyclists, mopeds and trams when crossing, especially at zebra crossings, and note that you can be fined for jaywalking if you cross away from a marked crossing.
The FCDO names drink spiking as a risk and names who it happens to. Its words are that there is a risk of drink spiking particularly for young women and solo travellers, that you should not leave your drink unattended, and that a group should stay together. If you think your drink has been spiked, it says to seek immediate medical help and contact the police rather than trying to get yourself home.
Everyone aged 14 or over in the Netherlands must be able to show identification at all times, and for a British national that means the passport itself. The fine for failing to identify yourself is 100 euros for anyone 16 or over and 50 euros at 14 and 15. This catches visitors who leave the passport in a hotel safe out of caution, which is the sensible instinct and the wrong one here.
Dutch drug law is far narrower than the country's reputation and the distinctions are legal rather than cultural. The FCDO states that tolerance applies only in designated premises in the major cities, that buying or possessing prohibited substances outside those premises is illegal and can result in a prison sentence including when transiting an airport, and that smoking soft drugs in public places is illegal. On mushrooms the distinction is exact: the sale of dried and fresh psychoactive mushrooms is illegal, while the truffle form is not covered by the Opium Act and is still sold in regulated smart shops. The advisory then gives a warning that is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing, because it concerns a combination people treat casually: mixing alcohol, cannabis and wild mushrooms can be fatal.
The Delft Packing List
A flat, damp, cobbled canal town where you will walk and cycle, so the list is rain, layers, and shoes that handle wet brick.
Merino base layers, for the damp rather than the cold
Our merino base layers are 100% Australian merino at 17.5 micron, and a long sleeve merino wool base layer for women is the foundation from October to April. The Dutch winter is five degrees with high humidity and a wind that comes off the North Sea across entirely flat country with nothing to break it, which is a damper and more penetrating cold than the number implies. Wool also solves the cycling problem, which is that you arrive somewhere warm having worked, and a cotton layer then cools you for an hour. A merino base layer bottom is worth having from December to February, particularly if you cycle.
A fleece from October to May
A Columbia Fast Trek fleece. Over a wool base layer this covers a Dutch winter, and the Nieuwe Kerk tower and the open bulb fields are both exposed to that flat-country wind.
A packable rain shell, and here the wind is the point
A Marmot PreCip Eco rain jacket. Dutch rain is frequent, usually light and almost always windy, and an umbrella is close to useless in this country and will invert on the first bridge. A hood that stays up is the requirement. If you cycle, this is the garment that decides whether the day works.
Shoes for wet brick and cobble
Salomon X Ultra 4 GTX shoes with Darn Tough merino hiking socks. Delft's old centre is brick and set stone, slick when wet, and the canal edges have no railing, which makes grip a safety feature here rather than a comfort one. Waterproof matters because wet feet by eleven ends a day in this climate.
The small things, and the first is a legal requirement
Your passport, carried on you, because Dutch law requires anyone aged fourteen or over to be able to show identification and for a foreign visitor that means the passport itself; the fine is a hundred euros. This is the item visitors most often get wrong, because leaving it in the hotel safe feels prudent. Add a reusable bottle, since Dutch tap water is excellent. A warm hat and gloves from November to March, which the wind makes necessary. Lights if you hire a bike for the evening, because riding unlit is fined. And a small daypack rather than a shoulder bag, for the train.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
Essential Resources for Women in Delft
Emergency numbers: 112 for all emergencies in the Netherlands, and 0900 8844 for non-emergency police, which is also the number the advisory gives for checking whether someone claiming to be a plain-clothes officer is genuine. English is spoken essentially universally in the Netherlands, including by emergency services, which makes this one of the easiest countries in the world in which to have a problem.
US State Department travel advisory: the Netherlands advisory. Read the current level there directly rather than relying on a figure printed in any guide.
UK FCDO travel advice: gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/netherlands, and read the safety and security page rather than only the landing page, because that is where the substance sits.
Main hospital: the Reinier de Graaf Gasthuis in Delft has an emergency department, with the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam and the Haaglanden Medical Centre in The Hague both fifteen minutes away by train and both major tertiary centres, so this is an exceptionally well covered part of Europe. Dutch healthcare is of a very high standard. The system runs through a mandatory insurance model and visitors should expect to pay and claim: a UK Global Health Insurance Card or an EHIC covers necessary state treatment, and neither covers repatriation nor private care. Note the Dutch GP gatekeeping system, which catches visitors out: for anything non-urgent you are expected to go through a huisarts, a GP, or the out-of-hours huisartsenpost rather than turning up at an emergency department, and arriving at A and E with a minor complaint will mean a long wait or a redirection.
Official health authority: the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. DUTCH HEALTHCARE USES GP GATEKEEPING, which catches visitors out: for anything non-urgent go through a huisarts or the out-of-hours huisartsenpost rather than an emergency department, where a minor complaint means a long wait or a redirection. A UK GHIC or an EHIC covers necessary state treatment and covers neither repatriation nor private care. Delft has its own emergency department and both Rotterdam's and The Hague's tertiary hospitals are fifteen minutes away by train
US Embassy: the United States Embassy in The Hague.
Official tourism authority: the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions. Two things that shape a Delft trip. THERE IS NO VERMEER PAINTING IN DELFT: the View of Delft is at the Mauritshuis in The Hague twenty minutes away, and the Vermeer Centrum here holds reproductions and context rather than originals, so see the paintings there and walk the streets here. And DELFT IS TEN TO FIFTEEN MINUTES FROM BOTH THE HAGUE AND ROTTERDAM, which makes it a cheaper and prettier base for both than either is for it. Tulip season, mid-April to early May, fills the whole region
Carry your passport. Dutch law requires identification from age fourteen and the fine is a hundred euros.
Delft's canals have no railings and sheer walls. Walk on the house side after dark, which is what residents do.
Dutch police do not have shiny badges. If someone claiming to be plain-clothes police asks to inspect your cash or cards, call 0900 8844.
An umbrella is useless here. Bring a shell with a hood that stays up in wind.
Solo women safety assessment: Delft is a very safe small town and among the easiest destinations in this batch for a woman travelling alone: prosperous, compact, flat, well lit, full of students so the streets stay populated, with rare violent crime and near-universal English including from emergency services. The FCDO publishes no advised-against areas anywhere in the Netherlands, and its advice is nonetheless more substantial than people expect, stating that TERRORISTS ARE LIKELY TO TRY TO CARRY OUT ATTACKS and that attacks could be indiscriminate including in places visited by foreign nationals. ON DRINK SPIKING THE ADVISORY NAMES OUR READER DIRECTLY, saying there is a risk PARTICULARLY FOR YOUNG WOMEN AND SOLO TRAVELLERS, that you should not leave a drink unattended, that a group should stay together, and that if you suspect your drink has been spiked you should seek immediate medical help and contact the police rather than trying to get yourself home. In a town with twenty seven thousand students that is the single most applicable line in the whole advisory. THE CANALS ARE THE PHYSICAL HAZARD AND DELFT IS WORSE THAN AMSTERDAM FOR IT: the FCDO says people drown in Amsterdam's canals and in canals elsewhere in the Netherlands and that the majority of drownings follow heavy drinking or cannabis, and Delft's canals run flush with the street with no railing at all, sheer brick walls, no ladders for long stretches, and narrow partly unlit lanes beside them. Walk on the house side after dark. THE BICYCLE IS THE DAILY RISK: cyclists and mopeds have right of way over cars and the advisory notes they often ignore the rules and red lights, trams have priority over everything, cycle paths are roads rather than pavements, and you can be fined for jaywalking. There is also a FAKE POLICE SCAM in the Netherlands and the advisory gives the tell: Dutch police do not have shiny badges, genuine plain-clothes officers rarely inspect cash or cards, and 0900 8844 reaches a real station. Finally, carry your passport: identification is a legal requirement from fourteen and the fine is a hundred euros.
Reading On
Delft sits between two cities and makes a better base than either. The The Hague packing list covers the seat of government fifteen minutes north, where Vermeer's View of Delft actually hangs and where the beach at Scheveningen is. Rotterdam, fifteen minutes south, is the complete architectural opposite and we have not covered it yet. The Amsterdam packing list covers the capital an hour away, and the Leiden packing list covers the other great Dutch university canal town half an hour north. For the country as a whole the Netherlands travel guide for women and the Netherlands packing list carry the trains, the cycling and the practical material in full. For why wool is the right fibre for arriving somewhere warm after cycling, read the guide to merino wool base layers for women. Every destination we cover is indexed at the travel packing guide for women, and the base layers are at the Roman Trail collection.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
