A small country with a long maritime tradition, The Netherlands (Nederland in Dutch) is home to a large number of historic lighthouses. For centuries fires were lit atop brick towers to guide returning Dutch sailors, and even today the traditional Dutch word for a lighthouse is vuurtoren (fire tower). The Netherlands is divided into twelve provinces (provincies), and the provinces are subdivided into municipalities (gemeenten). The name Holland is often used informally to refer to all of the Netherlands, but properly (and historically) it describes the coastal region between the Rhine/Maas delta and the entrance to the Zuiderzee (now the IJsselmeer). This page includes lighthouses of the province of Noord-Holland (North Holland) This region includes the IJmuiden, Den Helder, and Amsterdam areas. It faces west on the North Sea and east on the IJsselmeer. The IJsselmeer is the shallow freshwater lake stretching northeast from Amsterdam, the remnant of the former Zuiderzee cut off from the sea since 1932 by the Afsluitdijk dam and causeway. More than half the original area of the Zuiderzee has been reclaimed as dry land by Rijkswaterstaat IJsselmeergebied, the IJsselmeer Directorate, an agency of the Ministry of Transport and Waterways. In 1975 a second dam was completed across the center of the IJsselmeer, from south of Enkhuizen to Lelystad, cutting off the southwestern part of the IJsselmeer as a separate lake called the Markermeer. The Markermeer was to be drained but this project has been postponed indefinitely and may never be carried out. There is strong interest in the country in lighthouses and their preservation and many towers have been restored in recent years. Lighthouses in the Netherlands are maintained by the Rijkswaterstaat, the ministry of infrastructure and water management. Lighthouses of the IJsselmeer are maintained by a separate division of the ministry, the Rijkswaterstaat IJsselmeergebied, formerly called RDIJ. In recent years there has been a movement to transfer some of the historic towers to the ownership of municipal authorities. The digraph IJ or ij acts as an additional letter in the Dutch alphabet. In Dutch vuurtoren is a lighthouse, lichtopstand is a smaller light beacon, baken is an unlit beacon, eiland is an island, ondiepte is a shoal or reef, baai is a bay, zeestraat is a strait, zeegat is an estuary or harbor mouth, kaap is a cape or headland, sluis is a lock, dijk is a dike, rivier is a river, and haven is a harbor. ARLHS numbers are from the ARLHS World List of Lights. NL numbers are from the official Dutch list Lichtenlijst van Nederland en aangrenzend gebied. U.K. Admiralty numbers are from volume B of the Admiralty List of Lights & Fog Signals. U.S. NGA numbers are from Publication 114. The international light lists do not include the lights of the IJsselmeer and Markermeer. |
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![]() IJmuiden Range Front Light, Velsen, February 2021 Instagram photo by Mike van den Bos |
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Notable faux lighthouses:
Information available on lost lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: East and North: Northeastern Netherlands | South: South Holland
Return to the Lighthouse Directory index | Ratings key
Posted January 23, 2005. Checked and revised February 12, 2025. Lighthouses: 24; lightships: 4. Site copyright 2025 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.