Where is Oisterwijk?
Oisterwijk is in the province of North Brabant (Noord-Brabant), in the south of the Netherlands. It lies roughly ten kilometres east of Tilburg and about fifteen kilometres south-west of 's-Hertogenbosch — Den Bosch — with its own railway station on the line that runs between the two. Amsterdam is around ninety minutes away by train, Eindhoven Airport about half an hour by road. Coordinates, if you want them on a map, are approximately 51.58° N, 5.19° E.
If you are looking at a map of the Netherlands, find Tilburg in the south, then look immediately east: the green block wrapped around the village is the Oisterwijkse Bossen en Vennen nature reserve, and Oisterwijk sits on its northern edge.
Is Oisterwijk a city or a village?
A village — a dorp, in Dutch — and it is firmly attached to that description. It has around fifteen thousand inhabitants in the village itself, a single long green rather than a grid of streets, and no city rights. What can confuse people is that Oisterwijk is also a gemeente, a municipality, which is an administrative unit rather than a town: the municipality of Oisterwijk covers the village plus Moergestel, Heukelom and Haaren. So "Oisterwijk" can mean either the village or the wider municipality, depending on who is talking.
What does "Oisterwijkse" mean?
Nothing mysterious: Oisterwijkse is simply the Dutch adjective form of Oisterwijk — "of Oisterwijk", the way "Parisian" relates to Paris. It turns up most often in the name of the nature reserve, the Oisterwijkse Bossen en Vennen, which translates literally as "the Oisterwijk woods and fens". The -wijk ending in the place name itself is a common element in Dutch and Low German settlement names, marking a place of habitation.
What Oisterwijk is known for
- The nature reserve. Around eighty fens in roughly a thousand hectares of woodland and heath, protected since 1913 and among the oldest reserves in the country. See the forests and fens in depth.
- De Lind. An almost kilometre-long tree-lined green through the middle of the village, named for a lime tree roughly a thousand years old, and lined with terraces.
- Thirty-seven national monuments inside the municipality, walkable in an afternoon — the monument route covers them.
- The KVL leather factory, once among the largest tanneries in Europe, now a creative quarter housing EKWC, the international ceramics residency.
- The nickname. Brabanders call it de Parel in het Groen — the Pearl in the Green. In 2020 the ANWB named it one of the most beautiful villages in the Netherlands.
Getting to Oisterwijk
The station opened on 1 May 1865 and still has a stoptrein service linking Tilburg and 's-Hertogenbosch, which puts the reserve about fifteen minutes' walk from the platform. By car, Oisterwijk sits just off the A58 between Tilburg and Eindhoven. Full details, including the route from Schiphol, are on getting here.
When to come
The village works all year. Spring brings the first dragonflies on the fens, late summer the heather, autumn the copper larch and the deer rut, winter the frost and the emptiest paths. Saturday morning is market morning on De Lind. The month-by-month guide goes through the year properly, and the itineraries put a day or a weekend together for you.