Goch Things to Do

Walking around the centre of Goch one can see perfect examples of various architectural styles. From neo classic to baroc and from late gothic to jugend style. The mixture of these houses gives a special, yet a bit chaotic. Still I enjoyed this and some other examples can be seen in the attached travellogue.

On the marketsquare of Goch there is a very beautiful clock across the road of the town hall. This "carrillion" contains 18 bells and on top a clockwork. It is in shrill contrast to the open square and plays it's clear happy songs over it every hour around the clock.

This magnificent house, just besides the marketsquare dates all the way back to 1500. It is the last late gotic patricians houses of Goch and thanks it's name for the brewery that was located in it in the 18th century. It even has the name to be the most beautiful civilian house in the whole Lower Rhine section of Germany.

In Goch alerady was a religious guesthouse on the marketsquare in 1358. It became knowns as the house of the holy spirit and later became a reformed church. As the church looks now it only was formed in 1700 and renovated in baroc in the year 1889. The church was completely destroyed by a bombing on february 7th 1945, but on the 14th of March 1951 it was reopened in old splendour. Goch has mixed religious inhabitants, partly catholic and partly reformed. For this last group this is the main church.

A walk along the small river Niers should not be forgotten when visiting Goch. This small waterstream was responsible for much of the importnace that this German town had in medieval times. It formed the main connection to the surrounding area and offered connections to many large towns in The Netherlands as well as Germany and even Belgium. One can now hardly imagine that such small river could in any way transport enough goods away and into the town.

The "Steintor" (Stone Gate) is the only remaining city gate from medieval wall that surrounded the then quite powerful town. It is a so called double-towered gate, as the doorway is situated between two towers connected together. The towers walls are over one meter thick and count three levels. Over the gate one can clearly see the gutter through which hot peck or oil was thrown to attackers. One part of the gate was the gatekeepers house, another was used as a prison and weaponslayer. The gate is for sure the number one on Goch's monuments list.