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Thorn the White Town

Thorn the White Town

Highlight • Settlement

Thorn the White Town

Recommended by 71 hikers out of 78

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Location: Thorn, Limburg, Netherlands

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Best Hikes to Thorn the White Town

4.4

(42)

219

hikers

1. Abbey Church Thorn – Bridge Over the Itterbeek loop from Thorn

7.97km

02:02

30m

Intermediate hike. Good fitness required. Easily-accessible paths. Suitable for all skill levels.

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Intermediate

4.5

(30)

134

hikers

2. Bridge Over the Itterbeek – Abbey Church of Thorn loop from Kessenich

7.45km

01:54

20m

Easy hike. Great for any fitness level. Easily-accessible paths. Suitable for all skill levels.

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Easy

4.7

(15)

hikers

3. Bridge Over the Itterbeek – Abdijkerk Thorn loop from Ittervoort

10.9km

02:45

30m

Intermediate hike. Good fitness required. Easily-accessible paths. Suitable for all skill levels.

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Intermediate

Tips

Dominiek Van Dooren

April 6, 2025

The core as a whole, with its stately white houses, is a protected cityscape. The streets are paved with Maas cobblestones. The protected view covers an area of 61.3 hectares.
(Wikipedia)

Translated by Google •

An 🇧🇪

May 3, 2024

Thorn was an independent state for more than eight hundred years, where female monks led by a queen abbess held sway. Count Ansfried founded a monastery for Benedictines at a height close to the Meuse around 990. Ansfried's daughter, later called Benedicta in tradition, became the first abbess of this monastery. This Thorn Abbey developed from the 12th century into a secular monastery, a monastic community in which the rules of order were interpreted liberally. Only unmarried women from the high nobility could enter the ladies' hall. Women within the order who wanted to marry lived outside the monastery walls in their own houses. Many of the homes of these Stift ladies have been preserved. The monastery grew into a small independent principality, the Abbey Principality of Thorn. This was the smallest sovereign state within the Holy Roman Empire. Thorn suffered greatly under the French. Then Thorn also got its characteristic white color. After the noble ladies fled in 1794, the French imposed a tax based on the size of the windows. The poor population, often living in large buildings that had previously belonged to rich people, could not afford this. To limit the amount of the tax bill, the windows were bricked shut. With the aim of hiding these construction traces, the houses were whitewashed.

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Manfred Meinel

August 18, 2023

It became white during the French period, the French introduced a window tax that was calculated according to quantity and size, the poor population then walled up some of the windows to hide their poverty, and then the walls were whitewashed

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Informations

Elevation 30 m

Weather

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Thursday 6 November

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Max wind speed: 7.0 km/h

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See hikes here

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Location: Thorn, Limburg, Netherlands

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Thorn the White Town

1. Abbey Church Thorn – Bridge Over the Itterbeek loop from Thorn

2. Bridge Over the Itterbeek – Abbey Church of Thorn loop from Kessenich

3. Bridge Over the Itterbeek – Abdijkerk Thorn loop from Ittervoort

Other Popular Places to Check Out

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