Provincie Noord-Brabant, Netherlands — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Provincie Noord-Brabant known for?

Noord-Brabant is the industrial and Catholic south of the Netherlands, strung between the Belgian border and the Meuse. Four cities carry it. Eindhoven, Tilburg, Breda and the provincial capital 's-Hertogenbosch form a loose ring of manufacturing towns across the flat sandy interior, with Eindhoven grown into the technology hub the Dutch call Brainport.

Carnival owns the calendar here, and the province keeps a Catholic and Brabant character that sets it apart from the provinces north of the great rivers.

Where is Provincie Noord-Brabant?

Noord-Brabant fills the south of the Netherlands, a broad flat province laid out between the Meuse and the Belgian frontier. The land sits high and dry. Unlike the sodden west of the country, nearly every part of Noord-Brabant stands above sea level, so the canals thin out and the sandy soil takes over across the interior.

The Kempen begins south of Eindhoven. That belt of sandy heathland runs on past the Belgian border into the province of Antwerp, low moor and pine planted over infertile ground. The province borders four neighbours.

Zeeland lies to the west and Limburg to the east, Belgium closes the whole southern edge, and across the water to the north sit Zuid-Holland and Gelderland. The Meuse marks the top. It runs west along the northern border to its mouth in the Hollands Diep, part of the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta, and there the water spreads out into De Biesbosch, one of the last freshwater tidal wetlands left in north-western Europe.

Everything else is city and field. Eindhoven, Tilburg, Breda and 's-Hertogenbosch stand spaced across the flat middle of the province, ringed by the farmland and heath of the Brabant plain.

What is Provincie Noord-Brabant like?

Noord-Brabant carries a southern, Catholic temper that marks it off from the rest of the Netherlands. The faith shaped the place. For centuries Catholicism was the dominant social force below the great rivers, and even as its grip loosened the province kept a Catholic and communal character the northern Dutch provinces never had.

Carnival is the proof of it. In the days before Ash Wednesday the towns give themselves over to parades of satirical floats, costume and role-reversal, and 's-Hertogenbosch renames itself Oeteldonk for the festival in red, white and yellow. Brabant has its own tongue.

The Brabantian dialect and its softer manners belong to the province as much as any building does, a mark of the old land that once reached south into Belgium. Eindhoven pulls the other way. Grown from the works of a single electronics firm into the Brainport technology district, the city gives the province a modern, engineering face that sits oddly beside the heath and the carnival.

Old faith and new industry share the same flat ground.

What is the history of Provincie Noord-Brabant?

Noord-Brabant grew out of the medieval Duchy of Brabant, whose heart now lies over the border in Belgium. The war split it in two. Brabant became a battlefield between the Protestant Dutch Republic and Catholic Spain, and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 handed the northern strip to the Republic as Staats-Brabant, ruled from afar and long denied the standing of a full province.

The province of Noord-Brabant took its name and shape in 1815, set apart from the South Brabant that stayed with Belgium after 1830.

What is the climate of Provincie Noord-Brabant?

Noord-Brabant has a mild temperate climate, wet and even through the year. The seasons stay gentle. Westerly winds off the Atlantic bring moist air across the flat land, giving cool summers and soft winters with rain spread over most months rather than one, and the western side nearer Zeeland tends to catch a little more of it than the sandy Kempen in the south.

How do you get to Provincie Noord-Brabant?

Noord-Brabant is reached mostly by air into Eindhoven and by rail from across the Netherlands. Eindhoven Airport takes the flights. As the second airport of the country it feeds most foreign arrivals into the province, while fast trains run down from the west and north to Breda, Tilburg, Eindhoven and 's-Hertogenbosch, and the motorways cross the Belgian border from Antwerp in minutes.