Vuurtorenplein 1 - +31 71 362 3887 info@noordwijk.info

Nijmegen is the oldest city in the Netherlands, the first to be recognized as such in Roman times, and in 2005 celebrated 2,000 years of existence.

The municipality is part of the "Stadsregio Arnhem-Nijmegen" (Arnhem-Nijmegen urban region (neighbouring city, 15 km (9 mi) north)), a metropolitan area with 736,107 inhabitants (2011).

The municipality of Noordwijk consists of the communities Noordwijk aan Zee and Noordwijk-Binnen, separated by a narrow green belt.

Besides its beaches, Noordwijk is also known for its bulb flower fields. It is located in an area called the "Dune and Bulb Region" (Duin- en Bollenstreek).

Noordwijk is also the location of the headquarters for the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), part of the European Space Agency (ESA). ESA's visitors' centre Space Expo is a permanent space exhibition.

The European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) was founded in 1968. The centre was to be a facility at the very core of ESRO. Its responsibilities included the engineering and testing of satellites and their payloads, the integration of scientific instruments in these payloads, and making arrangements for their launch. In some cases member states were to produce the scientific instruments for ESRO or produce them as part of their own national effort and compensate ESTEC for its service. In practice, national organisations simply used ESTEC as a service organisation and left it to pay for their efforts from the ESRO budget. After the Bannier Report the facility gained overall executive authority for spacecraft development and was merged with ESLAB. The satellite control centre was also moved to ESOC. ESTEC was originally to be located in Delft (South Holland) but because of unforeseen difficulties, Noordwijk was chosen instead.