De Spitkeet, Open-air museum in Harkema, Netherlands
De Spitkeet is an open-air museum in Harkema spread across four hectares and displaying reconstructed homes representing different housing styles from the Frisian heathlands. The site includes several rebuilt structures, from simple mud huts to more established homes, giving a cross-section of how people lived in this region.
Between 1850 and 1950, heathland residents built simple peat cottages known as spitkeet that workers could construct in just one day. These quickly built homes became typical of the northern Netherlands during this period.
The museum displays traditional Frisian housing types, including woodland cottages and cave dwellings, that show how different social classes lived side by side. Visitors can walk through these homes and see the contrasts in daily life between wealthy and poor families.
The site is easy to explore on foot as the houses are spread along marked paths that are accessible to most visitors. Plan for at least two hours to comfortably walk through the different structures and displays.
The grounds contain an authentic cemetery for poor residents that shows how limited resources were for the lowest income families. The graves stand as a sobering reminder of how difficult life was for these communities.
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