The Brink is the wide triangular common at the centre of Laren, the medieval village green where farmers once drove their cattle and where the village fairs still take place. The basilica sits on one side, café terraces line the others, and old oaks shade most of it through summer. On Saturday mornings a small market runs along the south edge.
This is where the village ended in painters' Laren — the spot Anton Mauve, Jozef Israëls, and the wider Laren School returned to repeatedly in the late nineteenth century, when the surrounding heath was still wide open and the village still lived from sheep. It is also the start and end point of the annual Sint-Jansprocessie.