Maastricht

Maastricht sits astride the Meuse where the Jeker joins it, hard against the Belgian border and closer to Aachen and Liège than to most of the Netherlands. It grew from the Roman settlement of Trajectum ad Mosam into a medieval river-trade and religious centre, became a garrison town in the sixteenth century, and gave its name to the treaty that produced the euro. Only Amsterdam has more listed national monuments. South of the centre rises the Sint-Pietersberg, mined for flint since Neolithic times and honeycombed by the nineteenth century with two hundred kilometres of tunnels; what survives is now a nature reserve.