Dordrecht is the oldest city in Holland and is almost a thousand years old. In the streets where we now walk, the footsteps of kings, noblewomen, rich merchants and even pirates once sounded. Horses pulled carts full of wine, wood, grain and fish over the bumpy cobbles.
In this treasure hunt, you will look for images, pictures and letters on monuments, the old buildings of the city. Sometimes they are hidden in facades and walls, so look around you!
Did you know that the letters on the warehouse are the year of construction in Roman numerals? The Romans invented these symbols more than 2500 years ago. There is no symbol for the number 0, which was only invented in the Middle Ages. Romans used almost exclusively dashes, so that they could scratch numbers into stones quickly and easily. The counting in Roman numerals goes like this: I = 1, V = 5, X = 10, L = 50, C = 100, D = 500 and M = 1000. Now you can calculate the year the warehouse was built. Do you know when Stokholm was built?
Did you know that Dordrecht was the home of pirates long ago? The most famous one was Simon the Dancer. He got his nickname because he always returned to his home town of Dordrecht after each raid. In those days, that was called a round dance. The trips to the Mediterranean Sea made Simon the Dancer rich and infamous.