Museum Borg Verhildersum

Discover the history of 19th-century Groningen at Museum Borg Verhildersum, featuring a 14th-century borg, museum farm, orchard, and garden.

Planning your visit

A borg is a fortified manor house of the Groningen countryside, and Verhildersum is one of the few that survive. Its origins are fourteenth-century, though what stands is largely later, set within a moat and formal gardens, and it was the seat of the landed families who owned and worked the surrounding clay soils.

The estate operates as a combined historic house and open-air museum. The manor interiors are furnished to the nineteenth century, showing the life of the Groningen gentry, while the museum farm, orchard, kitchen garden and outbuildings cover agricultural labour — the other side of the same economy, worked by tenants and hands whose conditions in this region were notably harsh and produced early agricultural unionism.

Heritage crops and old fruit varieties are grown, and seasonal demonstrations cover farm work.

Leens sits in the far north of the Netherlands, in a landscape of dykes, terps and enormous skies. Allow two hours. The main booking is an entry ticket. Current availability is shown below.