Dordrecht is the oldest city in the Netherlands, and its compact historic centre still has the texture of a medieval merchant town: leaning gabled houses, three rivers meeting in front of an old gate, and a vast unfinished tower watching over the rooftops. Almost everything worth seeing is within a fifteen-minute walk of the Grote Kerk, which makes it an ideal city to wander without a plan.
The two anchor sights are the Grote Kerk for atmosphere and the Dordrechts Museum for paintings — Aelbert Cuyp, who was born here, has a room of his luminous river scenes. The Huis van Gijn shows what a wealthy merchant's house looked like furnished, room by room. Walk east along the Wijnstraat to the Groothoofdspoort and the point where the Merwede, the Oude Maas and the Noord meet; it is one of the busiest river junctions in Europe and you can watch barges queue up for the locks.