University of Franeker (Academiegebouw)

For more than two centuries Franeker was one of the most important university towns in the Dutch Republic, with a Faculty of Theology, Law, Medicine, and Philosophy that attracted students from across northern Europe. The university buildings still stand near the centre, used now as municipal offices. A small museum inside outlines the institution's history and displays scientific instruments and student paraphernalia from its golden age.

The university was abolished by Napoleon in 1811 and the town never quite recovered its scholarly importance. But the bookshops, the academic-style architecture, and the disproportionate number of historic buildings for a town this size are direct consequences of those two and a half centuries of learning.

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The university opened in 1585 — only fifty years after Leiden — and counted Descartes among its visiting scholars. He famously enrolled here in 1629 under the pseudonym 'Renatus des Cartes Poictevin' to escape the attentions of Dutch intellectual society in Amsterdam, and stayed at a house on the Voorstraat that still exists.

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