Town Hall of Gouda at the Market

by Jeroen de Jongh Photography

The Town Hall of Gouda is located at the Market. The fifteenth-century town hall is one of the oldest gothic town halls in the Netherlands.

In 1395, the Gouda city council bought the market field from the lords Van der Goude to build a town hall there. Yet it would take until 1448 before construction began. According to the city historian Ignatius Walvis, the poor financial position of the city was the reason for the continual postponement. The new town hall served to replace the old one, which according to Walvis stood on the Gouwe, on the site of the later De Zwaan brewery. Others, however, locate the predecessor (from 1395) of the current town hall just east of the former police station on the Markt, with possibly another predecessor in a hall at the southern tip of the Markt.

In 1497, the Town Hall was refurbished on the occasion of the visit of Philip the Handsome to the city. In 1517/1518 the building was rebuilt. According to the historian Walvis, the Town Hall was surrounded by water until 1603 and could be reached by a drawbridge. In that year, the current platform in Renaissance style was made by the city sculptor Gregorius Cool.

In the period 1692-1697 another major rebuilding took place. The current scaffold at the rear of the Town Hall was also built in this period. Before that time, there had already been a scaffold at the Town Hall, which was first mentioned in 1525. In the period (1946-1952), the building was again drastically renovated. The old, wood