The Brink is the heart of Deventer and, by any measure, one of the most handsome market squares in the Netherlands. It is wider and longer than most — large enough to accommodate the Friday market, the major events of the city's social calendar, and several open-air cafes at the same time without feeling crowded. The lines of medieval and Renaissance houses around the edge are remarkably intact, and the whole square reads as a kind of architectural anthology of Dutch civic building from 1300 to 1700.
The dominant building is the Waag (weigh-house) of 1528, with its distinctive twin-stepped gable and the giant copper kettle hanging on the front wall (the local story is that it commemorates the boiling of a coin-counterfeiting official, but no one believes it). Next door is the Speelgoedmuseum. Cafes and bakers line the south side; for the Deventer koek, Bussink on the western corner has been at the same address since 1593.