This book aims to provide a broad overview of the versatility of the architecture of Bergen North Holland, as a blueprint for the developments of Dutch architecture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The invisible red line in the book is the metamorphosis from sleepy farming village to enclave of artists and open-air museum of architectural styles. The carrier is the selection of 22 buildings that exemplify this. This so-called canon of Bergen is widely covered in text and image. Besides the unsurpassed villa neighborhood Park Meerwijk, relatively unknown buildings by the Netherlands' best architects such as H.P. Berlage and J.B. van Loghem and later NOAHH, Jo Coenen, Thijs Asselbergs and Ben van Berkel have been selected. The photographs by John Lewis Marshall and texts with cross-references to the many valuable socio-cultural aspects of Bergen, but always in relation to architecture and spatial development, provide a unique book.