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Our tour of Pilgrim sites starts at the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, in front of the Hooglandsekerk. Built in the 15th century; the clock tower remains from an earlier smaller church of the first half of the 14th century.

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Around the corner, the door of the church's south transept is open for visitors during the summer. In 1609, William Brewster and his wife buried one of their children in this church. Continue by going back along the Nieuwstraat to the archway leading to the castle.

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The arch with the lion on top leads to the Burcht castle. This was built ca. 1200 by the medieval viscounts of Leiden, to replace an earlier wooden castle on the man-made hill, which may be as early as the 9th century.

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Leiden’s coat-of-arms shows the crossed keys of St. Peter, patron saint of the town’s first parish church.

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In the Pilgrims' time, the country was at war and the castle walls were still maintained for possible defense. Nevertheless, the hill was a favorite place for families to relax in a city without parks.

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The Hooglandsekerk, seen from inside the castle walls.

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Looking from the castle battlements across to the impressive Hooglandsekerk.

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The spire of Leiden’s town hall, beyond Leiden’s roof tops.

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Leaving under the lion arch, turn right and walk one block to the covered bridge. In the Short Route, you will cross the bridge. Markets here and along both sides of the river on Wednesdays and Saturdays have been held continuously since the 13th century.

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The Short Route continues one block beyond the bridge to the Breestraat. Facing the Corn Bridge Alley is this 18th-century mansion opposite the City Hall

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Leiden’s Town Hall. This is where the Long Route rejoins us.

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The Long Route follows the Nieuw Rijn (New Rhine) River without crossing the Corn Bridge. One of the shops here was redecorated a hundred years ago in the Art Nouveau style.

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The street rises steeply to the High Street (Hoogstraat). The cupola and classical front of the Roman Catholic Hartebrug Kerk dates from 1830. A restaurant in medieval cellars under the street serves outdoors on a floating terrace.

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Enter the Donkersteeg (Dark Alley) to reach the Hartebrug Church and the Mare (street, former river).

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A beautiful stepped gable on the Mare. The alley behind the Hartebrug Church reaches the Vrouwekerk Square.

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The remains of the Vrouwekerk seen in the evening, with the Mare Kerk dome in the distance. The medieval Church of Our Lady was granted to the French Reformed in 1586. The building was torn down partly in the 19th century and in the 1990s.

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Members of this church were among the first European settlers of New England in 1620 and New Amsterdam (now New York) in 1624. Pilgrim Philippe DeLannoy (Philip Delano), ancestor of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was baptized here in 1603. François Couck and Hester Mahieu married here the same year. Jesse de Forest, leader of the 1624 migration to Guyana and New Netherland, was a member since 1615.

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The Boerhaave Museum of the history of science includes a reconstruction of the anatomy theater of the University of Leiden. The Pilgrims’ surgeon, Samuel Fuller, probably observed dissections in the anatomy theater when it was in the Begijnhof Chapel that had become the University Library and lecture rooms.

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We return along the Mare to the footbridge across the Rhine.

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At the far end of the bridge, the Weigh House was rebuilt in 1667. An earlier weigh house stood here when the Pilgrims arrived in 1609; their boat from Amsterdam moored at the quai by the crane that unloaded market goods brought by boat to be sold in the markets along the river.

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Everything had to be weighed officially before it could be sold. The sculpture from 1658 by Rombout Verhulst shows the scales that are inside the Weigh House. The ancient scales still hang inside, where concerts and exhibitions are held.

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The Fish Market Fountain was unique in Holland. Water flowed from a rain cistern on the top of the castle mound, through lead pipes that ran under the river to reach the spouting dolphins of the sculpture. The Town Hall was rebuilt after a fire in 1929. The front from 1595 was relatively undamaged and could be retained.

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Town hall façade, 1595. The late 16th-century renovation represents the attempt to revive Leiden's importance as a commercial center after the Siege of Leiden (1573-4), when half the population died of starvation.

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The Town Hall steps where Pilgrim couples came to register their betrothals and marriages. Among them, William Bradford and Dorothy May's marriage was registered here.

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Across the street from the Town Hall is the carved doorway (dated 1607) of the Tripe Market (Penshal), where poor people could buy cheap cuts of meat, such as liver and kidneys. Poultry was sold by vendors who set up stalls along the street outside.

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Beyond the Penshal at the next corner, in the middle of the Breestraat is the Blauwesteen. Here medieval justice was executed. Thieves had fingers cut off; faulty products were burned here. Nearby on a stone pedestal, convicted gossips and scolds had to stand to be jeered at.

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The 17th-century Breestraat house with pillars and carving is the "Vergulden Turk." The mansion of a wealthy merchant. The figures in the gable - Neptune and Mercury, gods of the sea and of communication - and the turbanned Turk, suggest that the merchant traded with Constantinople.

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Farther down the Breestraat one can see the bell tower of the French Reformed Church (Walloon or Huguenot Church) a chapel from the 13th century given to the French Reformed in 1638. Beyond the church, Leiden’s Municipal Auditorium (Stadsgehoorzaal) hosts concerts by internationally famed musicians.

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The Pieterskerk Choorsteeg, an alley, leads away from the Blauwesteen.

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The first street crossing the Pieterskerk Choorsteeg is called the Lange Brug (Long Bridge).

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Along the Lange Brug, the rear entrance of the Tripe Market is less elaborately decorated than the entry on the Breestraat.

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At the first cross-street up the Lange Brug to the right, the student house on the corner was once where John Adams and his sons John Quincy and Charles lived while the boys were studying in Leiden.

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The Leiden burgomaster, historian, book publisher, Jan Orlers, lived here, just around the corner from William Brewster, whose house opened onto the alley now named after him. The little alley through the archway on the right is the William Brewstersteeg (alley).

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In the last house on the right, Brewster and his assistant Edward Winslow set type for books forbidden in England. Many were smuggled into England. Others were sold at the Frankfurt Book Fair, taken along by Orlers. Only the end wall of Brewster’s house remains.

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When the English ambassador succeeded in stopping the Pilgrims’ publishing, Brewster went into hiding, then left on the “Mayflower” in 1620. Return to the Pieterskerk Choorsteeg and walk to the Pieterskerk, going around the church on the right (north) side to the Pieterskerkstraat.

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The Lokhorstkerk is a "hidden church." The actual church was built behind houses in the 17th century, so that it was not visible from the street. Those houses were replaced in 1860 by the present entrance. This church was built by Mennonites, already here when the Pilgrims arrived.

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Across from the Lokhorstkerk, a “poortje” or little gate dated 1610 leads to a close like what the Pilgrims built behind their minister’s house by the Pieterskerk.

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The Diefsteeg leads to the Latin School. The stepped gable was built in 1599. While the Pilgrims lived in Leiden, Rembrandt attended this university preparatory school. Founded in the middle ages the school trained boys for the Pieterskerk choir.

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The Gravensteen (Count’s fortress) was the residence of the Counts of Holland around 1200. It became a prison and presently is part of the University of Leiden. Many Protestants, were martyred here under the Inquisition. At the time it was illegal to sing psalms in public.

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To the left of the Gravensteen is a short alley called the Muscadelsteeg, that leads to the Pieterskerk.

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The tall Pieterskerk tower at the west front of the church collapsed in 1512, but the bell was unbroken and was hung in a stubby free-standing tower at the corner of the church yard, giving the name Bell Alley or Kloksteeg to the street.

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Across from the church, a white house on the corner was where the family of Pilgrim Thomas Rogers stayed while he went with son Joseph to America to start a farm in 1620. Thomas died in the first winter. His surviving family moved to Plymouth in 1623. The theologian Jacobus Arminius lived in a house facing the church, a couple of doors further.

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Two Pilgrim memorials mark the walls of the Pieterskerk’s former baptismal chapel. One commemorates John Robinson, the Pilgrim minister who lived directly across the street and was buried in the Pieterskerk in 1625.

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The second monument lists the Pilgrims who died during the Leiden exile and are buried in the Pieterskerk. The inscription quotes Pilgrim Robert Cushman’s biblical remark (1622) that “We are all, in all places, strangers and pilgrims.”

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On the far side of the churchyard is the formal entrance to the almshouse called the Pesijnshof. In 1683 the almshouse replaced the house where John Robinson had lived, and where the Pilgrims held religious services for several years.

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The Pesijnshof garden may be visited, but silence is requested. This is Leiden’s most frequently visited almshouse, which can be distracting for the people who live here. The Rapenburg Canal is a block away, at the end of the Bell Alley (Kloksteeg).

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Pilgrim Thomas Brewer lived in the second house to the right of the almshouse in the Kloksteeg. Brewer supported William Brewster’s publishing. The minister of the English Reformed Church, Hugh Goodyear, who became a friend of the Pilgrims, lived for a while in Brewer's house.

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Theological debates were held in the lower room on the right end of the medieval convent chapel that is the oldest building of the University of Leiden. Here Robinson debated with Arminius' successor Simon Episcopius. Now the room is part of the Museum of University History.

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Pilgrim Robert Cushman lived in a small house built in an alley off the left side of the Nonnensteeg, but the houses there have disappeared. The archway on the far side of the Rapenburg once led to Cushman’s house.

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The route follows the Rapenburg canal (without crossing the bridge). The steps down to the water were probably used by the Pilgrims to embark on the boats that took them to Delfshaven. A little farther along the curve of the canal, just past a fenced garden is an alley leading to the Bagijnhof (Béguinage) Chapel.

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A view over roofs to the Pieterskerk from the Begijnhof. The Béguinage Chapel became the university library and anatomy theater. The Pilgrims could use a large ground-floor room on Sundays in the last years of their stay in Leiden, when religious meetings in private homes were illegal. Return to the Rapenburg and turn left.

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A small house on the left farther along the Rapenburg has a carved coat-of-arms. This is the house of the Van Duibenbode brothers, who kept carrier pigeons. During the Siege of Leiden in 1573-1574 their birds carried messages between Leiden and the navy of William of Orange.

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The Dutch navy sailed up to the city walls to bring food to relieve the siege, once they had flooded the farmland south of town. The city granted the coat-of-arms to commemorate the brothers’ contribution to the city. The brothers took the surname "van Duivenbode," meaning "of the carrier pigeons."

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On the opposite side of the Rapenburg Canal an arched bridge crosses the Vliet River. The Pilgrims began their migration to America in 1620, departing Leiden in boats that went along the Vliet River to Delfshaven, where they got on their ship the "Speedwell."

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The “Speedwell" took them to England to meet the “Mayflower." The "Speedwell" was leaky, so the ships turned back. Many "Speedwell" passengers got on the "Mayflower" which continued on alone to America. Other Pilgrims emigrated on the later ships, "Fortune," "Anne," "Little James," and another ship also called the "Mayflower."

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Two bridges farther, the Vliet flows out of Leiden. Next to the bridge is the “Pilgrim Archives” – where the flag flies next to the regional archives. Here one can use computer screens to do Pilgrim research using online archival material also accessible from home.

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Two picturesque streets lead back left to the Pieterskerk. The route continues straight, following the canal, however. A bronze inscription identifies Jean Luzac’s house.

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America's first ambassador, the future president John Adams, visited Leiden's publisher Jean Luzac in the 1780's here, where the French-language pro-American "Gazette de Leyde" was produced. Luzac was killed in 1807, when a boat full of gunpowder exploded, destroying about eight square blocks of houses and killing 155 people.

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Across the canal, a house from 1630 recalls the 17th century. Like most old houses, the windows have 19th-century sashes.

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Demolition of a building on the corner of the Nieuwsteeg opens up a view of the Pieterskerk.

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The 1807 gunpowder explosion cleared the space for this park, named after Pieter Adriaensz. Van der Werff, the town’s leader during the siege of 1573-1574.

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A relief on the Van der Werff monument depicts the Thanksgiving service of October 3, 1574. An annual commemoration, that Thanksgiving contributed to the inspiration for the Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving harvest festival in the early fall of 1621.

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The elaborate 16th-century tower across the canal belongs to the Lodewijkskerk. This former chapel became a guildhall after the Reformation. William Bradford belonged to the cloth guild that met here. Cloth approved by the guild was sold here.

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Two stepped-gable mansions face a bridge that leads to the Yarn Market.

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A sculpture of a ball of yarn surmounts a water pump in the center of the Yarn Market. The Levendaal was a long canal filled in during the last century. Pilgrims Francis Cook and his wife Hester Mayhew lived with their children somewhere on the Levendaal.

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At the corner of the first block, Leiden’s 18th-century synagogue serves a small Jewish congregation. The Torah rolls were hidden in the town archives during World War II. Turn left at the corner; at the next intersection, turn right one block to the Nieuwe Rijn River. The footbridge downstream to the left leads back to the Pilgrim Museum.

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The Beschuitsteeg, with the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum on the right.

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The door to the museum. Please come in!