This pretty canal in my birth town Alkmaar has a very special monument. You can see it on the left corner by the bridge. Yes, that green house is almost entirely built of wood (except for 1 stone wall inside), and it is one of 2 wooden houses still surviving in Alkmaar.

According to legend, this house was built a few years before the Spanish siege of 1573. The owner was a preacher named Jan Arentsz. When the cannonball hit the house, only a spinningwheel and a tub got destroyed, and the occupants of the house miraculously survived without so much as a scratch….