Hansa City of Elburg

Elburg in the Netherlands is one of the eighteen* Dutch Hansa Cities that formed a Hanseatic league with many similar cities around Northern Europe.

One of the things that make it special to visit them is that the time stood still. The are all well preserved picturesque towns (officially cities as they had a - and mostly still have - city wall around them) worth the photographic eye.

Some additional info:

* The Dutch Hansa Cities are: Arnhem, Deventer, Doesburg, Elburg, Groningen, Harderwijk, Hasselt, Hattem, Kampen, Nijmegen, Oldenzaal, Ommen, Roermond, Stavoren, Tiel, Venlo, Zutphen en Zwolle.


Wikipedia: The Hanseatic League was a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and their market towns. Growing from a few North German  towns in the late 1100s, the league came to dominate Baltic maritime trade for three centuries along the coast of Northern Europe. It stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland during the Late Middle Ages and declined slowly after 1450.