Baarle-Nassau Vacations, Baarle-Nassau Vacation Reviews, Tourism Guide

Baarle-Nassau Vacation Guide

Baarle is 1 village. Baarle-Hertog is Belgian and 748 hectare. It consists of the parish Zondereigen and 21 enclaves surrounded with Dutch lands. Baarle-Nassau is Dutch and is 7698 hectare. It consists of the core Baarle-Nassau with 7 enclaves and 1 enclave surrounded with Belgian lands, the hamlet Castelré and the parish Ulicoten. Also there is a piece of no-man’s-land of 118 hectare.

Baarle was already encountered by Caesar in 54 BC, but it took till the 12th century to become this mesh. When Lords, Dukes and Counts were arguing over the property of the village. Finally it got divided as fief, what was later inherited by Willem van Nassau, the founder of the Netherlands. This gave the Dutch part the name Baarle-Nassau. The other parts were kept by the duke of Brabant, which gave the other part the name Baarle-Hertog (Hertog = Duke).

In 1648 the Netherlands and Belgium were divided as two countries, but between boundary post 214 and 215 there was a length of 50km where it turned out impossible to draw a straight line. It even took until 1974 to make up a contract to divide the parcels piece by piece officially. And even then they forgot about 3 parcels that now belongs to nobody. The border was finally settled in 1995, a process which turned some Dutch into Belgians and vice versa!

With that Baarle-Nassau-Hertog is the most unique village, historical, geographical and political of Europe or maybe even the world.