"Roermond" a Roermond Travel Page by elPierro

Roermond is a medium sized city in the Netherlands with some 50000 inhabitants. It's the most central city in Limburg and most important city in Central Limburg.

It's named after the river the Roer, which mounds into the river the Maas right here. (Mond is dutch for Mound, or Mouth).

Roermond is a quite old city and looks very Dutch compared to most other cities in Limburg. Still it's got a distinct "foreign country" athmosphere and will rather be considered to be a mixture of French/Belgian and a bit of German. The last mainly because of the huge stream of German tourists/inhabitants/workers who take the small step accross the nearby, seemingly non-existing, border.

Tourism is in high development in this region, especially the recreational part. Last year the citycenter of Roermond has been elected as 2nd most attractive of the province (after Maastricht which ranks number 1 in the country).
Roermond has a likeside and riverside with many marina's and other watersport facilities (a small beach is included). Furthermore the big fashion outlet shopping center attracts many people. If you decide to visit on sundays, count for heavy traffic at these sites, especially traffic from Germany is heavy.

Just like the rest of the province, Roermond is not that long part of the Netherlands. In fact Roermond used to be in another province, the province of Gelderland, only later to be added to the province of Limburg (nowadays 2 provinces as the western part is actually Belgian).

Roermond has been Spanish, French, Austrian and Belgian. Untill around 1840 it became a part of the Netherlands.

Early after the first invasian of the French, they introduced Catholisism to the southern part of the Netherlands. Roermond became the seat of the bisshop and still is the seat of the bisdom of Limburg nowadays.

Mining never affected Roermond, it didn't grow prosperous, didn't go through a big industrial revolution and also didn't cripple when the mines closed down. The Coal rush a few miles to the south didn't make it to Roermond, and Roermond managed to keep it's wealth on long term. that's why Roermond is nowadays one of the richest cities in Limburg.

In 1992 the heaviest earthquake ever registered in the Netherlands, had it's epicentrum in Roermond. 5,8 on the Scale of Richter was measured and caused some damage to the city, Including the old Munster church. The quake could be felt in the whole country, Belgium, Far inside Germany and Northern France.

Most of the Netherlands copes with the danger from water as it's located below sealevel. Roermond is located in the highest province of the country, but also here they fight against the water.

Roermond has 2 rivers, the Maas and Roer, both are known to rise in the late winters when heavy rainfall causes the rivers to flood. 1993 and 1995 the last heavy floodings took place, Roermond got off relatively well. Many other cities suffered from 1 to 2 meters of water in the street.

The river is now dammed, with plains and a large lake-district nearby Roermond where redundant water can flood into. Still the river knows the rise from time to time, showing it's still able to be a treath.

And other wet pleasure, rainfall. When there's heavy rainfall the tunnels underneath the railtracks are known to flood. But that's mainly a piece of bad design.