Discovering Valkenburg, the largest underground Christmas market in Europe

Almost three hours away from Amsterdam in a small village tucked away in the south of the Netherlands is a quaint Christmas village called Valkenburg.

Every year during the Christmas season, this sleepy old town where castle ruins are nesting transforms into one of Europe’s most popular Christmas villages.

The focal point of Valkenburg’s Christmas festivities is the “Gementeegrot” or municipal cave. This is the largest underground Christmas market in Europe which features a seemingly endless labyrinth of flea markets, restaurant and bars during the holiday season.

For an entrance fee of €7.50 (PHP 422), you can enter the Valkenburg caves which have become a popular tourist attraction. The caves are easy to reach by public transport and specially designed to make it easily accessible for wheelchair users. The entrance rests on the hill of Cauberg where numerous hotels, restaurants and attractions are also located.

Rich history kept inside the caves

Sipping a warm cup of glühwein, a special mulled wine infused with spices, in one of the underground bars, it’s hard to imagine that this cave has once been submerged in water 65 million years ago. During the trip, we met a group of Dutch historians who are committed in preserving the rich symbolic history of the Valkenburg caves. They showed us sample of rocks and fossilized shells mined inside the cave. There were also photos of bats which lived inside but are now said to be hiding or living someplace else—at least until the thick crowd and the lights went out. The cave, filled with thousands of Christmas lights and noisy chatters, is not an ideal home for nocturnal species.

Before the caves were converted into a Christmas attraction, these caves were once mined for a very important stone used for construction of castles and buildings: limestone. Hans Ogg, a historian based in South of Netherlands, said the stones could be 200 meters thick.

“The Christmas market is a commercial project, but for us, this cave features an important part of our history more than 600 years ago. People continue to investigate the history of caves such as the tools used by our ancestors before, writings on the wall, this is what’s really important to us,” Ogg said.

Looking at the crowd busily making its way around the maze, I wonder if people actually take the time to check out this piece of Dutch history. It couldn’t be more obvious at times when we would stumble upon an inscription on the wall, written by one of its visitors hundreds of years ago. Today, visitors still vandalize the cave, with their names, number or political statements like “No Farmers No Food.”

My friends and I wandered around the cave looking for Christmas finds. Various trinkets like home decors, ugly Christmas sweaters, and candles can easily be found in the market. But what I found interesting are the hundreds of transparent Christmas balls with some notes clipped inside them. For €1 (PHP 56), you can write a wish on a piece of white paper, put it inside the Christmas balls to be displayed in the Christmas trees that fill the cavern.

Tempting as it was, I didn’t put in a note for Santa. One, because I don’t think a euro can fulfill my heart’s desires, and secondly, because I constantly wondered where all these Christmas balls would go after the markets were closed down. Will they be recycled or trashed into the bin? What about the notes—will they be thrown away, too? In any case, I would rather spend that euro in the toilet fee.

Over all, it was a quite an eccentric experience to roam around the largest underground Christmas market in Europe. The market runs until January 5, after the New Year festivities. The stalls would be removed and the cave will once again be empty, save for the occasional organized cave tours. As we left Valkenburg, I was left wondering – will the bats come back once the Christmas frenzy is over? —KG, GMA News