Sloten (Sleat in Frisian) is the smallest of the eleven historic cities of Friesland and one of the most photogenic small towns in the Netherlands. It received its city rights in 1426, but never grew beyond what its 17th-century ramparts could contain: a population today of around 700, walking distance from one fortified wall to the other in five minutes.
The town is laid out as a single canal running through the middle — the Voorstreek on one bank, Achterstreek on the other — lined by stepped-gable merchant houses, the old town hall, and a working windmill. Two water gates close off the canal at either end, where small cannons still point toward imagined invaders. The pattern is essentially unchanged since the Dutch Golden Age, and Sloten works as a kind of accidental open-air museum of how a Dutch town looked before the railways arrived.
There is a small but well-curated city museum in the old town hall, the windmill "De Kaai" still grinds grain on summer Saturdays, and a couple of cafés along the canal serve coffee, apple pie, and Frisian sugar bread. The water around the town is part of the Frisian Lakes network, and Sloten is a stop on the Elfstedentocht — the legendary 200-kilometre ice-skating race between the eleven cities — though this only takes place in the rare winters cold enough to freeze every canal along the route.
Sloten is easily combined with Lemmer to the south and Sneek to the north, or visited as a half-day stop on a sailing trip through the Frisian Lakes.