Leeuwarden's most famous landmark is a failure. The Oldehove was meant to be the tallest church tower in Friesland — a defiant statement of Catholic confidence in the years before the Reformation — but the foundations gave way almost as soon as work began, and the project was abandoned half-built and visibly tilting.
What is left, paradoxically, is one of the most photographed buildings in the Netherlands. Squat, brick, lopsided, and unmistakably wrong, it leans at an angle of about two degrees from vertical and is offset from a true plumb line by nearly two metres. You can climb the 183 steps to the top for a panorama of the city and the flat Frisian countryside beyond. There is a small exhibition on the ground floor explaining the tower's hapless history.