Tiel is a city (Hanseatic city) and municipality in the Dutch
province of Gelderland. The municipality had approximately 41,962
inhabitants on 1 August 2020 (source: CBS) and has an area of 34.81
km² (of which 2.17 km² is water).
Tiel is located on the A15
and can be reached via the N834 and N835. The city is wedged between
the rivers Waal (in the south), the Linge (in the north) and the
Amsterdam-Rhine Canal (in the east). Tiel acts as the terminus of
the Utrecht - Tiel and Arnhem - Tiel railway lines. Tiel has had a
station on these lines since 1882; since 2007, the Passewaaij
district also has a station on the Utrecht - Tiel line. Furthermore,
Tiel has an overnight port for inland shipping.
The city's
mascot is Flipje, the fruit boss (the cartoon character of the
former local jam factory De Betuwe). There is a statue of Flipje in
the city center.
In 2011, a site from the
New Stone Age was uncovered near the Kellen business park along the
Linge. Archaeologists found traces of habitation, pottery, flint and
animal bone.
In 2017, one of the richest Roman sites in the
Betuwe was found during an expansion of the Medel business park.
Among the 2,500 bronze objects found were a rare balsamarium
(ointment jar) decorated with love deities in relief, and luxury
items such as cloak pins, rings, daggers, an oil lamp and a wine
strainer. The objects lay in a small area of twenty to fifty
meters wide in an old river bed that lay along the slightly higher
situated "Hoge Hof". Researchers suspect that a villa or a sanctuary
has stood there. Several New Stone Age burial sites (circa 3650 BC)
were also found, including a tomb of at least eight people.
Tiel is one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands:
the place dates from the period 850-1100, while most Dutch cities
originated in the late Middle Ages (1150-1300).
The decline
around 850 of the international trading place Dorestad,
approximately ten kilometers away, caused part of the trade to shift
to Tiel. In 896 Tiel received toll charges from the Frankish king
Zwentibold. Archaeological research in the inner city confirmed what
was already known from written sources: in the tenth and eleventh
centuries the city was a trading post of international importance,
which had close ties with the much richer and more powerful trading
city of Cologne. Tiel also had close trade relations with England at
that time.
According to the Benedictine chronicler Alpertus
van Metz, Tiel was plundered by Vikings. He wrote that pirates
entered the trading settlement without encountering any resistance
in 1006, quickly dragged away the supplies of life, after which the
settlement was burned to the ground. Archaeological evidence for the
looting is lacking.
They were merchants from Tiel who, around
1015, complained to the German emperor about the illegal toll set up
by Count Dirk III of Holland near Vlaardingen. This would lead to
the (for the emperor) badly ended punitive expedition against the
Dutch count.
It is not known whether Tiel obtained the right
to coin, but coins were minted. From the twelfth century onwards,
the international role gradually declined. In the thirteenth
century, Tiel received city rights from the bishop of Utrecht and
joined the Hanseatic League, a Northern European alliance of trading
cities, which was particularly important for Baltic Sea trade. Until
the late Middle Ages, Tiel was an important trading city.
Major city fires took place in Tiel in 1136, 1334 and 1420.
The city was often the focus of power struggles between the counts
of Gelre and the dukes of Brabant. In 1339 the city became
definitely Gelderland, when Duke John III of Brabant transferred
Tiel to the Duchy of Gelre. In the late Middle Ages and the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the walled city expanded
further with a suburb and new fortifications.
In the old city
center, several monuments remind us of that rich past, such as the
Sint-Maartenskerk, the Waterpoort with Groote Society, the
Courthouse, the former Bellevue society, the Ambtmanshuis dating
from 1525 that, together with the Ambtmans garden designed by Jan
David Zocher, is part of the town hall complex, and the Gothic house
on Weerstraat, which also dates from the sixteenth century.
Tiel was one of the first municipalities in the Netherlands to have
a cemetery built outside the city limits. The Ter Nav current
cemetery dates from 1786.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Tiel developed into a small industrial town. The metal industry, galvanizing companies and fruit processing in particular developed. The city walls were demolished and the first urban expansion started. The Inundation Canal was constructed between the Waal at Tiel and the Linge at Wadenoijen, as part of the New Dutch Waterline.
In the Second World War, Tiel was badly hit during fighting between the German occupiers who were stationed in the city and the Allies who were located on the other side of the Waal. The St. Martin's Church and the Waterpoort, among others, were seriously damaged by the shelling. In the years after the war, the city center was restored, but traces of the bombing can still be found.
The victims of the Second World War are commemorated with various monuments: the execution site on the cut, the monument to the fallen warrior, the Jewish monument, the monument in the Jewish cemetery, a plaque for N.A. Oostinga, the Indisch monument, the Moluccan monument and 21 Stolpersteine. The statue De Roeier is located in the hamlet of Zennewijnen. See also the list of war memorials in Tiel and the list of Stolpersteine in Tiel.
In 1949, the 50,000th newly built house in the Netherlands was
completed after the war in Tiel and opened by the Minister of
Housing. The Waterpoort was rebuilt in 1979. In 2006, dredging and
cleaning of the city canals, which still contained ammunition from
the war, began. The dredging was carried out with the help of the
so-called Bombox, a mobile safety construction that was specially
built for this project. In total, five hundred large and small
explosives were brought to the surface.
In the twentieth
century the city expanded significantly. The A15, built in the
1960s, provided good access. The western extension Westluiden arose,
consisting largely of social housing for the migrant workers from
the Mediterranean region who came to work in the industry. The
municipality was later expanded with the villages of Drumpt,
Kapel-Avezaath and Wadenoijen, which were transferred by the former
municipality of Wadenoijen. In addition, the hamlet of Latenstein in
1956 and the hamlet of Medel were transferred to Tiel in 2002 by the
municipality of Echteld. In the nineties of the last century, on the
site of the hamlet Passewaaij, between Wadenoijen and Tiel, the
construction of the large-scale Vinex new housing estate Passewaaij
was started.
On January 31, 1995 and in the days that
followed, 250,000 people, varying from five days to two weeks, were
forced to evacuate from large parts of the river area due to the
dangerously high water levels of the Rhine, Maas and Waal. Tiel was
one of the cities that was evacuated. The Rivierenland evacuation
was one of the largest evacuations in recent Dutch history.