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| Museum ship Vlotburg in Meppel starts on 04.03. till 31.05.2025 |
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J. van den Boschkade, Meppel.
Source: Google Maps
History
Meppel was already mentioned in a document in 1141, but at that time it was nothing more than a group of farms. In 1422, Meppel was separated from Kolderveen as an independent parish and was granted permission to build a church. This Grote or Mariakerk still stands today, although much has changed over the centuries. At that time, the place was nothing more than a village. Meppel flourished in the 16th century as a result of the peat diggings in the northern Netherlands; the town was an important transit port due to its connection with the Drentsche Hoofdvaart and the Hoogeveense Vaart on one side and the Meppelerdiep on the other. The Zuiderzee could be reached via the Meppelerdiep at Zwartsluis. In the 17th and 18th centuries, many bargemen settled in the town, which received its town charter from the Drost of Drenthe in 1644 and now had more than 1,000 inhabitants. Lodewijk Napoleon granted Meppel city rights again in 1809. On November 5, 1815, King Willem I granted Meppel its own city charter.
The waters that run through the center of Meppel are called canals. Because of the names Heerengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht, among others, the city is sometimes referred to as the Mokum of the North. Meppel is also compared to Amsterdam for other reasons. For example, there have been links between the two cities for centuries and the Jewish community had a strong presence in Meppel before the Second World War. Street names such as Synagogestraat are a reminder of this period. The above-mentioned canals all lie along the old route of the Hoogeveense Vaart and the Beilerstroom through the center of Meppel. In the 20th century, some of the canals that ran through the city center were filled in. A number of drawbridges were also replaced by fixed bridges. Since then, it is no longer possible to drive through Meppel to Drenthe, partly due to the narrowing of the Hoogeveense Vaart near Oosterboer in 2005. In 2008, part of the Gasgracht up to Prinsenplein in the city center was reopened. A swing bridge was built over the Gasgracht near the old "Spitzenbrücke". This bridge was modeled on the Tip Bridge and is called the Prinsenbrug. There are plans to reopen more canals.
The inhabitants of Meppel are also called "Meppel-Moskitos" or mosquito sprayers, in reference to a folk tale known from several places around the world. The story goes that one night some residents thought the church tower was on fire because a cloud of smoke hung around the Meppel tower, but it turned out to be a swarm of fireflies or mosquitoes. A statue of this folk tale was erected in Meppel in 1971 by Aart van den IJssel.
During the Second World War, almost all the Jewish inhabitants of Meppel were transported to concentration camps by the German occupiers and lost their lives there. Of the 250 Meppel Jews, 232 perished and only 18 returned.
In 2007, Meppel became a millennium municipality.
Meppel has an active historical society, the Stichting Oud Meppel.
The coat of arms of Meppel
The coat of arms reflects the history of the town: the three clovers symbolize the pastureland around Meppel; the three black rectangles represent peat and stand for the peat diggings and the peat trade; the ten silver pennies in the red border stand for the ten sacks of grain that the village of Meppel paid to the church of Kolderveen (near Nijeveen, a neighbouring village of Meppel) from 1422.
Flag + coat of arms of Meppel:
 
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