"'s-Hertogenbosch: capital of... " a Den Bosch Travel Page by OlafS

On the old VT you couldn't make a page about this great city. Thankfully, that has been remedied now, and it was about time too. With plenty of silly entries like Europoort you can at least expect to have an entry for this provincial capital, can't you?
's-Hertogenbosch is the official name for this city, but most people prefer to use the shorter 'Den Bosch'.
's-Hertogenbosch means 'forest of the duke', as the duke of Brabant once had a hunting lodge here, near the village of Orthen. The hunting lodge became a settlement, the settlement became a city that eventually swallowed up Orthen. In the Middle Ages 's-Hertogenbosch was in importance the second city of the northern Netherlands, Utrecht being the most important, and the fourth city in importance of the Duchy of Brabant. Today 's-Hertogenbosch is the capital of the province of Noord-Brabant. It's not the biggest city in the province, and unlike Eindhoven and Tilburg it has not taken its chance to get a university within its borders. Its politicians only started thinking about demolishing the old centre when the general public started caring about these things enough to put up succesful resistance. Recently the plans to turn a unique historical building into an ugly museum, for which an entire block of old houses needed to be demolished to give it more "prestige", were abandoned. Although a modern city by any standards, 's-Hertogenbosch sill has much of its old charm. In short; a nice place that should be on the list of anybody interested in culture. Quite a nice place for shopping too.