A Village Called Giethoorn

A village called Giethoorn is a village in the Dutch province of Overijssel. It is located in the municipality of Steenwijkerland, about 5 km southwest of Steenwijk. Giethoorn used to be a carfree town known in the Netherlands as Venice of the North or Venice of the Netherlands. A carfree town is an area of a city or town in which automobile traffic is prohibited. They are instituted by communities who feel that it is desirable to have areas not dominated by the automobile. Converting a street or an area to car-free use is called pedestrianisation. It became famous, especially after 1958, as the Dutch film maker Bert Haanstra made his famous comedy Fanfare there. Therefore, Giethoorn is an internationally well-known tourist attraction in the Netherlands. In the old part of the village, there were no roads (nowadays there is a cycling path), and all transport was done by water over one of the many canals. The lakes in Giethoorn were formed by peat unearthing.