Stadhuis Goes

The town hall closes off the Grote Markt of Goes, and with its tower and lantern it competes only with the Maria Magdalenakerk for attention in the old centre. It is a national monument, and its appearance today is the result of five centuries of building and rebuilding.

The building began as a late-medieval Gothic hall combining several civic functions. Its oldest part is the vleeshal, the meat hall, dating from 1410, where meat was sold under the control of the town authorities. Between 1550 and 1554 the building was extended. The big change came in the 1770s, when a thorough renovation that also covered the weigh house and the meat hall gave the town hall the facade and tower that dominate the market square today.

The finest work of that renovation is inside. The council chamber is fitted with elegant rococo panelling, and its ceiling is decorated with stucco and allegorical paintings, behind a wrought-iron gate. The wedding room was renovated in the same period. Up in the lantern of the tower hangs an automatic carillon of eleven bells: ten were cast by A.J. van den Gheyn in 1766 and one by Van Bergen in 1948. The drum mechanism that plays them dates from around 1550, which makes it one of the older surviving parts of the building.

The town hall is best appreciated as part of the market square around it. The Grote Markt is the centre of Goes, the main town of Zuid-Beveland, and has been the town's market place since the Middle Ages. From the square it is a short walk to the Maria Magdalenakerk, begun in 1423, to the old harbour quays of the Stadshaven, and to the Historisch Museum De Bevelanden in a former convent on the Singelstraat. The building has had other uses over the years; in 2007, for example, there was a restaurant in the former meat hall.

The town hall suits anyone interested in Dutch civic architecture and in the history of the smaller market towns of Zeeland. Most visitors see the exterior and listen for the carillon from the square; the rococo council chamber is the part worth asking about if you want to see inside.