Explore Eindhoven

A taste of Eindhoven

Eindhoven is the Netherlands' fifth city and the country's design and technology capital — a former industrial town in the southern Brabant province that grew up around the Philips electronics factory (founded here in 1891) and ASML (the world's most important semiconductor lithography company, headquartered just outside town and arguably the most strategically important company in Europe). The city was heavily bombed in WWII and rebuilt without the constraints of a medieval core, which gives it a sleek, contemporary character quite different from the Dutch postcard. The brilliant Van Abbemuseum is one of Europe's most adventurous contemporary-art collections, with strong Russian avant-garde, conceptual, and political work. The redeveloped former Philips light-bulb factory complex at Strijp-S is now the design district — a startup, restaurant, and gallery hub set in a 27-hectare industrial heritage site, with the brilliant interactive Philips Museum nearby telling the company's century-long history. The Glow light festival in November turns the entire centre into a free outdoor art exhibition, and the Dutch Design Week in October is the country's biggest design event, with 350,000 visitors. Eindhoven also has a serious football pedigree at PSV Stadium and is the gateway to the rural southern provinces and Belgian Limburg.