Experience the best of Nijmegen

The Romans built a fort on the hill above the Waal two thousand years ago, and Charlemagne is said to have kept a palace here later. Valkhof park still holds a small Romanesque chapel and the ruined apse of an older palace chapel, and the museum beside it shows Roman finds and art. Below, the Grote Markt has a seventeenth-century weigh house, with the Gothic Stevenskerk just behind.

In September 1944 American paratroopers crossed the Waal in canvas boats under fire to take the bridge, an episode remembered along the waterfront. The Liberation Museum at nearby Groesbeek tells the story in detail. East of the city, the floodplains of Ooijpolder and Millingerwaard are grazed by free-roaming horses and cattle, while the orchards of the Betuwe stretch west along the river.

Student cafés fill the streets around the Radboud University, and Betuwe fruit, from cherries to pears, appears in markets as the year turns. Each July tens of thousands of people arrive to walk the Four Days Marches, with crowds lining the route. The dykes along the Waal make flat, open walking whenever the weather is mild.