Netherlands · Provincie Friesland · Leeuwarden
Bilgaard, Leeuwarden — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Bilgaard is a district of Leeuwarden, the city whose record runs to the Fries Museum, Tresoar and the Grote of Jacobijnerkerk.
About Bilgaard
Where to stay in Bilgaard
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
Leeuwarden's museums are the pull. A room in Bilgaard trades the doorstep of the Fries Museum and Tresoar for ground the museum list does not reach, leaving the Historic Centre Leeuwarden as the place the day still has to go. The choice is really a distance.
Anyone here for the Princessehof Ceramics Museum, the Grote of Jacobijnerkerk or Natuurmuseum Fryslân will spend the day in the old streets, and a Bilgaard bed simply decides how the day begins and ends.
About Bilgaard
What are the main landmarks in Bilgaard?
The list belongs to Leeuwarden. Bilgaard's record carries the Fries Museum, Tresoar, the Princessehof Ceramics Museum, Natuurmuseum Fryslân and the Grote of Jacobijnerkerk, none of which is a district landmark so much as a city one. Churches thicken the rest.
The Waalse Kerk, the Westerkerk, the Pelikaankerk and Sint-Dominicuskerk stand alongside the Pier Pandertempel, Museum De Grutterswinkel and the Fries Verzetsmuseum in a set the Historic Centre Leeuwarden holds together.
What is the history of Bilgaard?
Bilgaard has no founding date of its own. What the record gives Bilgaard instead is Leeuwarden's own past, kept in Tresoar and the Fries Verzetsmuseum and written into the Historic Centre Leeuwarden that the district's landmark list borrows wholesale. Even the memorials are the city's.
The Waling Dykstra memorial, the Pier Pandertempel and the Coulonhûs and Grytmanshûs all sit in the register under Leeuwarden, which leaves Bilgaard a name attached to a history written under the city's name rather than its own.
Where is Bilgaard?
The same temperate city north of the equator holds both Bilgaard and the Historic Centre Leeuwarden, with Tresoar and the Fries Museum in the older half.
Good for
More areas in Leeuwarden
Updated August 2026