The Kaasmarkt is the historic heart of Purmerend, a compact square that once thundered with the business of cheese and cattle. In the town's seventeenth-century heyday, farmers from the surrounding Beemster and Waterland polders brought their rounds of Edam and Gouda here every week, and buyers came from across North Holland to trade. The square is quieter now, but it retains the proportions and atmosphere of a working market town rather than a prettified tourist set piece. A few cafes and shops line the perimeter, and the paving still has the worn, purposeful look of a place that has been doing something useful for a long time.
Flanking the square is the Sint-Nicolaaskerk, a Gothic church whose tower anchors the Purmerend skyline. The church dates from the fifteenth century and was expanded several times as the town grew prosperous from its markets. The interior is plain by Dutch church standards — the Reformation stripped out most of the ornament — but the proportions are generous and the light through the high windows is excellent. It is worth stepping inside to appreciate the scale of what the cheese trade could build. The surrounding streets between the church and the market square preserve a handful of seventeenth and eighteenth-century facades that give a sense of what the whole centre once looked like before the postwar housing estates arrived on all sides.