Eindhoven's history hides in plain sight: a medieval tower stranded among tower blocks, a 1249 watermill still turning, and workers' streets built brick by brick for a light-bulb firm. Three days of the city before the design labels arrived.
Reconstructed Iron Age farmsteads and a medieval Brabant hamlet raised on the marshy Genneper grounds from excavation data. Costumed smiths, potters and bakers work the site daily. Open Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00.
Grain has been ground on this bend of the Dommel since 1249; the standing brick mill dates from 1750 and its wheel still turns for visitors. The adjoining Genneper Hoeve farmstead and manor grounds are freely walkable.
The stump of Woensel's medieval Sint-Petruskerk: a 15th-century tower left standing when the nave came down in 1888, now marooned in a walled graveyard between post-war housing blocks. Headstones run back to the 1600s.
Pierre Cuypers' 1867 neo-Gothic church with twin 73-metre towers nicknamed David and Goliath, built over a 13th-century parish church. Inside: Van der Waay murals, a 1900 Vollebregt organ and a 47-bell carillon.
Operation Market Garden told through the 101st Airborne's drop near Best on 17 September 1944: gliders, a restored Sherman, jeeps and the story of Joe Mann, who smothered a grenade to save his squad. Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00.
Eindhoven's central square carries the date of its liberation, 18 September 1944, when Irish Guards tanks reached the city from the south. A night later the Luftwaffe bombed the crowded streets, killing over 200 civilians.
Hub van Doorne's 1928 Eindhoven forge became DAF: the collection runs from the first trailers and the 1958 Variomatic Daffodil to Formula 3 racers and the 600 prototype. Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00, Tongelresestraat 27.
Two Philips landmarks facing each other: the 1909 Lichttoren, where bulbs burned behind glass in endurance tests visible from the street, and the 1931 Witte Dame lamp factory, both scarred by the RAF raid of 6 December 1942.
A company village begun in 1910 for Philips workers: some 700 brick terraces around Frederiklaan and Barrierweg, each with its own garden, laid out to a strict hierarchy of foreman and labourer housing. Still fully lived in.
Kleine Berg and Grote Berg follow the sandy ridge where the medieval settlement of Eindhoven began, one of the few quarters the 1942–44 bombs largely spared. Nineteenth-century shopfronts now hold cafes and workshops.
Vincent lived in this village from 1883 to 1885 and painted The Potato Eaters here. The museum maps 22 surviving sites, from the vicarage garden to his father's church and the weavers' cottages he drew.
The Augustinian monastery beside the 1898 Paterskerk, where generations of Brabant boys boarded at the Augustinianum school, reopened in 2019 as hotel, chapel venue and cultural house. The cloister garden stays open to walk.