Vrijthof is a large urban square in the centre of Maastricht, Netherlands. The square developed from an ancient Roman and Frankish cemetery into a semi-private space that belonged to the Collegiate Church of Saint Servatius. In the 19th century, it became the town's main square. It is surrounded by important heritage buildings, museums, a theatre, and a range of hotels, restaurants, and bars. The square is regularly used for public events.
via Wikidata · CC0
Vrijthof is a large urban square in the centre of Maastricht, Netherlands. The square developed from an ancient Roman and Frankish cemetery into a semi-private space that belonged to the Collegiate Church of Saint Servatius. In the 19th century, it became the town's main square. It is surrounded by important heritage buildings, museums, a theatre, and a range of hotels, restaurants, and bars. The square is regularly used for public events.
==History== thumb|Contents of a grave of a Merovingian woman (Limburgs Museum, Venlo) thumb|Vrijthof in the 1670s. Drawing by Valentin Klotz (British Museum) thumb|Vrijthof around 1750, possibly by Jan de Beijer Archaeological excavations have shown that the area of the square was used as a burial site since the late Roman period. Several large cemeteries from the early Middle Ages were excavated in 1969–70, prior to the construction of an underground parking lot. The publication of the thousands of artifacts has only recently started. Further excavations on the north side of the square in 2003 revealed the remains of thirteen layers of the ancient Roman road, the so-called Via Belgica, an important route between Boulogne Sur Mer at the English Channel and the city of Cologne on the river Rhine.
2 mapped locations
via Wikidata sitelinks · CC0
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).