Rotterdam to Maastricht and Thorn: Private day trip

Thorn is a fun anomaly—a village where every historic building is whitewashed, a legacy of 18th-century French tax evasion. But its story begins much earlier. Thorn was founded in 975 AD as a Benedictine nunnery and evolved into a sovereign principality ruled by 33 princess-abbesses for over 800 years. These noblewomen governed a tiny kingdom (just 250m²!) with its own laws, currency, and Gothic Abbey Church, which is still crowned by a Baroque altar. Today, you can wander cobbled lanes past ivory cottages, visit the Abbey Church’s museum, or marvel at the 1:100 scale ‘Panorama Thorn’, an intricate model eight years in the making. With 2,300 residents and a history larger than life, Thorn proves that even the smallest places can wear crowns.