Choose your base in Utrecht

The medieval core inside the moat: Dom tower, Neude, Vredenburg market, everything walkable and almost nothing drivable.

Utrecht's split-level canal: shops at street height, medieval cellars and waterside tables a full storey below.

The quiet southern quarter: Centraal Museum, Nijntje, almshouse courtyards and the greenest canal in the city.

Just outside the moat: nineteenth-century terraces, the Griftpark, and a five-minute bike ride to the Dom.

Ten minutes west of the station: Turkish and Moroccan food streets, cheap rooms, mosque minarets and no tourists.

Streets named after birds between the Vecht and the Griftpark: cheap, local, and a four-minute bike ride to the Dom.

Utrecht's grandest green address: 1900s villas around a landscaped park, ten minutes by bike from the Dom.

The green eastern edge: Maliebaan, the railway museum, the Kromme Rijn path and a straight run to the science park.

Interwar garden village north of the ring road: brick terraces, hedges, quiet streets and a ten-minute bike ride to the Oudegracht.

Utrecht's big 1960s housing district: cheapest rooms in the city, six minutes to Centraal by train, and real woods on its doorstep.

A literal island between two canals: 1960s modernism, cheap rooms, trams every few minutes and Utrecht's new car-light Merwede district next door.

Utrecht's vast new western district: Roman fort museum, a Piet Oudolf garden, three train stations and family-sized rooms at sane prices.

Utrecht's office district east of the ring: provincial government, glass blocks, mature green, and rates that collapse every weekend.

The university campus east of town, officially Utrecht Science Park: landmark architecture, botanical gardens on a fort, tram 22 to Centraal.

Old factory village on the Vecht: a genuine castle, a fort with a terrace, converted workshops and a car-light new district taking shape.

A town of its own 10 km south of Utrecht: trams every ten minutes, big locks on the Lek, old Vreeswijk, and business hotels with parking.

Baroque castle, an eighteenth-century Moravian quarter and the Heuvelrug forest starting at the end of the street, twenty bus minutes east of Utrecht.

The country-estate belt on Utrecht's eastern edge: Sandwijck, Houdringe and Beerschoten, plus the national weather institute and a village high street.

Green commuter village of interwar villas in the pines, nine sprinter minutes from Utrecht Centraal and a gate into the Heuvelrug woods.

The Netherlands' most single-minded cycling town, ten sprinter minutes south of Utrecht, with waterline forts and fruit orchards on its southern edge.

A walled river town on the Lek with one enormous main street, a surviving gate, and Fort Everdingen's brewery a bike ride away.

The province's other historic city: a water gate, a ring of wall houses, Mondriaan's birthplace and a 98-metre tower, fifteen train minutes from Utrecht.

Cheese town on the Oude Rijn in the middle of the Green Heart, with a fifteenth-century castle and twelve intercity minutes to Utrecht.

A miniature walled town on the Hollandse IJssel, famous for the weigh house that certified accused witches as too heavy to fly.

Woodland village on the Utrechtse Heuvelrug with an exiled Kaiser's house museum, estate hotels and marked forest loops in every direction.

Walled river town on the Lek, once the Viking-age port of Dorestad, with a windmill on the city gate and a working ferry.

Village seven train minutes from Utrecht, wrapped in the Amelisweerd woods, fort earthworks and the slow green Kromme Rijn.

Merchant estates and clipped gardens along the Vecht, six train minutes from Utrecht, with a swimming lake three kilometres north.

Small walled town on the Hollandse IJssel with a Renaissance tower, a tram line into Utrecht and cheese polders behind it.

Villa town between royal woods and the Eem polders, with a palace, a castle estate and pancake houses at Lage Vuursche.