Where We Take A Walking Tour Of Arnhem And Discover Its WWII History

Followed By A Visit To A Great Art Museum

There were two starting times for the walking tour of Arnhem and we lucked out with the later one. I’ve never heard of Arnhem before booking this cruise. It turns out that it was the site of an important battle during WWII.

This is the John Frost Bridge. It was destroyed and rebuilt multiple times during WWII, most recently in 1949 after the war was finally over. The battle of this bridge is depicted in the 1977 movie “A Bridge Too Far” (which I’ve heard of, but never seen – war movies aren’t my thing).

We were in the “leisure” group, which meant we were walking more slowly and would see a lot less of the town; that was fine by us.

We walked towards the city center and came to the remaining gate from the old city walls.

The city center is fairly small. We saw St. Eusebius Church right in front of us after entering through the gate.

Here are some photos from around the outside and inside the church.

Near St. Eusebuse Church is St. Walburgis Church. We didn’t go inside this one. This church dates back to the 14th century

Our tour guide, Rob, had mentioned in passing about an old synagogue on the street behind the St. Eusebius church. Surprisingly, there were several Jews in the our group, and we all wanted to see the synagogue. So we did.

Rob didn’t know the current size of the Jewish population in Arnhem, but it seemed that the synagogue is still in use.

We also saw stumbling stones

Time was running short – we didn’t have much time between the end of this walk and the beginning of our next excursion, so the group headed back to the bus.

Shortly after lunch, we boarded a bus to take us to the Kroller-Muller Art Museum and Sculpture Garden. The art collection was donated from the private collection of Helene Kroller Muller. During WWII, the entire collection was hidden in a bunker and managed to survive. There was a fabulous collection of Van Gogh, Monet, and other very famous artists.

Van Gogh is my favorite painter. We saw paintings that I’ve never seen before in person.

There was a room where we could take our photo as if we were sitting in the cafe in Arles as depicted by Van Gogh.

There were a couple of nice pieces showing pointilism:

These are some closeups to show the dots of paint in The Orchard.

We went outside to view some of the sculpture garden. It was rather large and we didn’t have enough time to walk through it all.

Driving through the park on the way out, we saw this hunting lodge:

Everybody on the bus was drifting off – it had been a long day.

Tomorrow: Kinderdijk and more windmills!