Culture & Events

Floriade is a World Horticultural Expo staged once every ten years in the Netherlands. During the period from April until mid-October 2012, the sixth edition of Floriade will be organised in Venlo.
The participating countries, businesses and horticultural companies and public and semi-public bodies present visitors to Floriade 2012 with the opportunity to enjoy the world's most exquisite and exceptional flowers, plants, trees, fruit and vegetables.
Floriade 2012 lets you experience nature. Using the senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell you can experience at first hand the influence horticulture has on the quality of our daily lives.

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Pinkpop, the oldest and best-loved open-air pop festival in the Netherlands, takes place every year over the Whit weekend in Megaland, the festival site of Parkstad Limburg in the municipality of Landgraaf. (The name "Pinkpop" comes from Pinksteren, the Dutch for Whitsun) The Pinkpop Festival was first held in 1970. Lots of internationally famous bands have now been on stage during Pinkpop, such as for example the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Dire Straits, Metallica, Foo Fighters and Rage Against The Machine.

The Orlando Festival has been bringing musicians from a very wide range of levels together for more than twenty-five years. Both younger and older amateurs are given lessons by renowned musicians. In the evenings they can listen to concerts given by their teachers and they play music together until midnight in the former abbey of Rolduc in Kerkrade.

The Limburg Festival is aimed at a broad audience. The objective is to bring those parts of the general public who rarely, if ever go to regular theatrical productions into contact with suburban and street theatre, in familiar surroundings, using the most varied, straightforward and audience-friendly material possible. In order to reach the target audiences, the Limburg Festival quite literally takes theatre to the people. Thousands of people from even the smallest villages and hamlets in the most southerly of the Dutch provinces swarm every year to see the fifteen to twenty internationally renowned professional street theatre groups on the market squares and high streets. Theatre for the people, as it used to be in days gone by.

This festival is held every year in Parkstad Limburg. It is a fascinating, summery event that astonishes, amazes and surprises. For ten days, Cultura Nova offers a hugely wide-ranging programme of theatre, music, dance, visual arts and films for adults and children. Its guests include regional, national and international artists and groups. Appropriate and often unexpected locations are chosen for all these special artistic productions. The heart of the Cultura Nova festival is in the centre of Heerlen, in and around the Glaspaleis (Glass Palace or Crystal Palace). The individual shows are located in a large number of unusual locations in the various municipalities of the Parkstad area.

The Wittem Arts Days are a permanent feature of the cultural calendar both for the region’s residents and for an increasing number of tourists. A multi-faceted programme of chamber music, literature, visual arts and lectures is on offer every year in September as part of the Wittem Arts Days. It all takes place in the Monastery Library in Wittem, is a listed building that provides an incomparably beautiful location with exceptional acoustics. The provincial authorities in Limburg have recently declared the library to be an official stage for cultural events.

The Musica Sacra festival is entirely devoted to religious music. It is put on jointly with the KRO, the Catholic public service broadcaster. For three days, there are concerts, film presentations and theatrical shows, all centred on sacred themes. The stages change from year to year, at various unusual locations in Maastricht city centre.

Ín November and December Valkenburg will be turned into a true Christmas Town. The whole town will be beautifully decorated. A real Christmas fairytale...
With a numerous of special events: Enjoy the Christmas Parade on Wednesday’s and Saturday’s and meet professor Falckenstein, Santa's Claus' assistant. This magnificent collection of floats, dancers and animators will parade through the centre of Valkenburg….

Visit the unique Christmas Markets in the Velvet Cave and Municipal Cave with numerous stands offering Christmas gifts and other luxuries and enjoy the Christmas spirit of Valkenburg! These are oldest and largest subterranean Christmas markets in Europe. Many hundreds of thousands of visitors have already passed through its labyrinth of passages to take advantage of the seasonal market's special atmosphere. You´ll be surprised by the lovely settings and decors, which are in full harmony with the numerous stands offering Christmas gifts and other luxuries. The spacious and long galleries that are typical for this cave, are very inviting to visitors who want to spend their time in a musical setting and a fancy equipped Christmas cave.