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Groningen
City and municipality in the Netherlands

Groningen

Groningen is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen province in the Netherlands.

Plan a trip to Groningen→From Amsterdam

Dubbed the "capital of the north", Groningen is the largest city as well as the economic and cultural centre of the northern part of the country; as of January 2025, it had 244,807 inhabitants, making it the sixth largest city/municipality in the Netherlands and the second largest outside the Randstad. As of 2025, the Groningen metro area had a population of 557,369 inhabitants.

Get in

Getting to Groningen

Groningen is served by

  1. 01
    Groningen Airport Eelde
  2. 02
    Groningen Noord

    All trains eventually arrive at the central station; only a few trains stop at the smaller stations.

See

Worth seeing

Downtown Groningen is pleasant and interesting. The city centre provides plenty of cultural heritage and a laid-back atmosphere. Together with the excellent Groninger Museum, it forms the main attraction for visitors. Like many cities in the Netherlands, the centre is surrounded by a canal. Several historic canals have been "gedempt", or filled, however, and turned into streets.

  1. 01
    Bureau Gemeentewerken at Gedempte Zuiderdiep 96

    There are a number of special architectural skyscrapers.

  2. 02
    Dot

    Originally known as Infoversum, this remarkable structure was built as the only full-dome 3D theatre in the Netherlands, before it was turned in a modern restaurant and cultural center.

  3. 03
    Wall House II

    The Wall House II is a building in the south of the city located on the banks of Hoornsemeer lake.

  4. 04
    Reitdiep

    You may know these Scandinavian looking colourful terraced houses from Pinterest or Instagram.

  5. 05
    Forum Groningen

    Contains the main public library of the city, two restaurants, cinema (5 screens, mostly arthouse films), exhibition spaces, the Storyworld museum (see Museums below), rooftop bar and more.

Do

Things to do

Football: FC Groningen were promoted in 2024 so they play soccer in Eredivisie, the top tier. Their home ground Euroborg (capacity 22,500) is 2 km southeast of city centre. Groningen is a cycling city par excellence. The inhabitants of Groningen possess an average of 1.4 bikes per person. The city features the highest cycling rate for anywhere on the planet; almost 60% of journeys are by bike.

Eat

Where to eat

A typical 'Groninger' specialty is Groninger worst, a sausage made from raw minced pork which is then air dried. You can buy this sausage in every supermarket and butchery. When visiting a snackbar, you should try a eierbal. The eierbal is a ball-shaped croquette, filled with veal and a whole egg. The eierbal is seen as the Groninger variant of the Dutch croquette. The Netherlands is known for its cheese.

How locals move

Getting around Groningen the local way

  • Go nextCatch a bus to Lauwersoog, only to hop on a ferry to the island Schiermonnikoog.

From Wikivoyage: Groningen, CC BY-SA. Not yet checked by us. Last edited 2026-09.

Text adapted from Wikipedia and Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph: Agnes Monkelbaan (see Commons), Wikimedia Commons.