FORT KIJKDUIN
FORT KIJKDUIN
The fort was built by order of Napoleon Bonaparte who visited Huisduinen in 1811. He saw great value in the strategic location of Den Helder and wanted to make it an important naval port. It was to become “the Gibraltar of the north”.
The first construction phase lasted until 1813. It was a masonry reduit with two bastions on the south side, surrounded by a dry moat. The main building consists of eight covered spaces, also known as ‘bays’. It is quite a large complex: at the time the fortress could accommodate more than 700 soldiers.
LIGHTHOUSE the LANGE JAAP
A national monument and
the highest cast iron lighthouse in Europe
Lange Jaap is a lighthouse in Den Helder in the province of North Holland and was inaugurated in 1878. The lighthouse received the status of a national monument in 1988.
With a height of 63.45 meters, Lange Jaap is the highest still burning lighthouse in the Netherlands and the highest cast iron tower in Europe. The climb to the top has 284 steps.
The Lange Jaap is not open to the public.
The tower is unsafe Lange Jaap has had cracks in the floors since 1998. From the 5th to the 17th floor. This has to do with the skewed placement of floors during construction. As a result, stresses in the floors were distributed unevenly. That is why the tower has not been accessible to the public for a long time. Yet it is not the floor cracks that make the tower unstable. This is due to the cracks in the wall panels. These were discovered during an inspection in September 2021. The cracks are so bad that the structure is now unsafe.
