Living With Water

Parts of the Netherlands are below sea level, and the country has a long history of having to cope with flooding. The Rijksmuseum holds two panels depicting the St Elizabeth's flood, which inundated Grote Waard, an agricultural region near Dordrecht. The flooding ultimately led to the formation of the Biesbosch nature reserve. The North Sea flood of 1953 is etched in Dutch memories. On a cold winter’s night, entire islands and tracts of land in Zeeland province, including villages and towns, were submerged under water. Over 2,000 people drowned or died of hypothermia. In order to prevent further disasters, the authorities built a system of dikes, dams and flood defences. This marked a drastic change to the course of human water management in the Netherlands. The construction of the Delta Works, as the system is known, culminated with the completion of the Eastern Scheldt storm surge barrier in 1986.