Discover Tilburg

If you’re looking for a hotel in Tilburg, the city’s culture, landscapes and routes offer different starting points for planning your trip. The city combines its textile past with art and cultural venues, as well as parks, waterfront areas and several routes. You can decide whether you want your stay to focus more on museums and industrial history, walks or an events programme.

Textile history, art and industrial heritage

The TextielMuseum is housed in a former textile factory and brings together textile design, art, fashion, cultural heritage and innovation. At the TextielLab, visitors can watch artists and designers collaborate with experts and work with textiles. The subject of textiles therefore extends beyond the history of the building to include design and practical work.

The LocHal offers a different connection to industry: the building, constructed in 1932, was formerly used to repair locomotives. Many monumental elements were preserved during its renovation. Today, the LocHal is a venue for exhibitions and presentations, as well as learning, research, meetings and creative work. Together, the two venues offer different perspectives on Tilburg’s industrial history and its links to culture and design.

The Van Gogh National Park walking route in Tilburg also explores a historical connection: it refers to Vincent van Gogh’s first drawing lessons with Master Huijsmans in 1866. Those interested in this part of the city’s history can explore it through a themed route rather than focusing only on individual buildings.

City routes with different focuses

For an overview of different parts of the city, the six-kilometre Urban Walking Route Tilburg passes through the Spoorzone, Piushaven, Dwaalgebied and Spoorpark. The stated distance helps with planning; no walking time or level of difficulty is specified. The route brings together several urban areas in one walk, so you don’t have to combine individual stops into your own route.

The Goirke and Spoorzone Heritage Route has a different focus: it starts and ends at the TextielMuseum and passes through Goirke and part of the Spoorzone. It can be explored on foot or by bicycle. Compared with the Urban Walking Route, this route focuses on the connection between Goirke, the Spoorzone and the TextielMuseum; the six-kilometre route, by contrast, explicitly names four urban areas.

Piushaven adds a waterfront dimension to this urban picture: since 1923, it has been an urban area where living, working and water sports come together. This makes it a different way to experience the city than routes that connect historic neighbourhoods or several urban areas.

Parks and landscapes

Spoorpark is a green meeting place in central Tilburg. Visitors can walk, play, exercise and relax there. The park’s public Urban Sports Area has a bowl, a pump track and bouldering features. Beach Tilburg adds beach volleyball, beach tennis and footvolley. The Kempentoren, which is over 30 metres high, offers views over Tilburg and the surrounding area.

Stadspark Oude Dijk combines modern park activities with a clearly dated history: until 1987, it belonged to the monastery garden of the Sisters of Charity. Today, the park is a place to walk, play, exercise and relax. Moerenburg offers a more rural setting on the southeastern edge of the city. Visitors can walk among pollarded willows, old hedgerows and flower-rich grassland. The landscape also features clear ponds, varied path edges, views through the forest, and flowers, birds and butterflies.

Music, exhibitions and getting there

013 Poppodium is the largest pop music venue in the Netherlands and hosts live music and festivals in hip-hop, heavy music, alternative mainstream and electronic music. If a concert or festival is important to your travel plans, check the event dates in advance. This lets you consider the music programme as a focus in its own right, without equating it with the year-round themes of the museums and parks.

Natuurmuseum Brabant combines permanent and temporary exhibitions with educational programmes and interactive offerings about plants, animals and ecosystems. Its location opposite Tilburg’s main railway station and bus station is a useful landmark for getting there: the museum is accessible by train, bus and car. This makes it possible to include cultural and nature-related attractions with different focuses in your travel plans.

Discover more destinations: West Tilburg, Berkel, Udenhout

Back to the main travel overview: Tilburg.