Den Burg
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Den Burg

Den Burg

Main village on Texel, with shops and services at the centre of the Wadden island.

Den Burg is the main village of Texel, the largest of the Dutch Wadden Islands, and the natural hub for anyone exploring the island. It's a compact, unhurried market town built around the Groeneplaats, with a weekly Monday market, several good restaurants, and the Oudheidkamer, a small local history museum in a leaning seventeenth-century building. The medieval Hervormde Kerk anchors the centre. The village has everything you need — supermarkets, bike rental, a pharmacy — without feeling overbuilt or touristy.

From Den Burg you're well placed to reach the island's beaches, dunes, and bird reserves in any direction. The nature reserve De Slufter, the wide beaches of Paal 17 and De Koog, and the bird-rich polders of the Waalenburg estate are all a short cycle away. Texel is best explored by bicycle, and Den Burg is where most visitors pick one up.

Guide

Eating Out

Den Burg has more places to eat than its size would suggest, partly because it serves as the dining-out hub for visitors staying in cottages across the island. The terraces around the Groeneplaats are the obvious place for an outdoor lunch — pancakes, broodjes, soup, and the inevitable fried fish.

For something more ambitious, Freya on Gravenstraat does well-judged modern Dutch cooking with island ingredients (lamb, sea aster, smoked fish); booking is wise on summer evenings. Sober on Weverstraat focuses on local meat and game with a small daily-changing menu. Het Pakhuus is a long-running brasserie favourite for a relaxed evening.

The island's signature is Texels lamsvlees — lamb from the sheep that vastly outnumber the human population — and almost every Den Burg restaurant has it on the menu in season. Local seafood, particularly mussels, North Sea sole, and smoked herring, is the other reason to eat your way through the village.

Guide

Getting Around

Texel is a bicycle island, and Den Burg is the place to pick up a rental. Several shops on the edge of the village hire bikes by the day or the week, with cargo bikes, electric bikes, and child seats all readily available. Book ahead in July and August. The island is flat, the roads have dedicated cycle lanes, and almost any point of interest is within an hour's ride.

Buses run from Den Burg to the ferry, to De Koog, to De Cocksdorp at the northern tip, and to most villages in between, but they are infrequent (roughly hourly in summer, sparser in winter) — fine for a single trip but slower than cycling for a day's exploring. A few visitors bring cars across on the ferry; you can manage Texel by car, but you miss the point.

Guide

Things to Do

Den Burg is a place to wander rather than tick off sights. The compact old centre, with its medieval street pattern around the Hervormde Kerk, repays a slow walk; the Oudheidkamer museum gives some background to what you are looking at; and the Monday market on the Groeneplaats is the weekly social event of the island. The bigger attractions of Texel — beaches, dunes, the seal centre at Ecomare — are short cycles away in every direction.