Huis met de Kogel, 16th-century wooden house in Alkmaar, Netherlands.
Huis met de Kogel is a wooden house from the 16th century in Alkmaar, built with overhanging upper floors supported by wooden brackets. The ground floor is occupied by shops, while the floors above keep their original timber facade with rows of windows and visible structural woodwork.
The house was built in the 16th century and is among the oldest surviving timber buildings in Alkmaar. During the Spanish siege of 1573, it was struck by a cannonball, which was later fixed to the facade as a reminder of that event.
This building is one of the few surviving wooden houses in Alkmaar and shows how construction once relied on timber framing with projecting upper floors. Walking past it, visitors can see how the wooden facade has been maintained while the ground floor serves as everyday retail space.
The building stands on a busy shopping street in the center of Alkmaar and is easy to reach on foot. The facade, including the cannonball embedded in it and the wooden upper floors, can be seen clearly from the pavement without entering.
The house is narrower at street level than at the top, because property taxes were once calculated based on the width of the ground floor. By building the upper floors wider, the owner gained more living space while keeping the tax bill low.
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