Rijswijk ZH 9

An easy start of a datestamp collection is to visit post offices in the villages and towns that are close by. One of the closest to Wateringen is Rijswijk, just 'down the road'. When I go to work the bus passes through Rijswijk and Voorburg, so getting out at one of the PostNL locations was not a problem. I chose the Hoogvliet supermarket that had a parcel point.

There are three towns called Rijswijk in the Netherlands, in the provinces of Zuid-Holland, Noord-Brabant and Gelderland. In the postcode system they are listed as Rijswijk ZH, Rijswijk NB and Rijswijk GLD. This Rijswijk is in Zuid-Holland (South Holland), the largest of the three.

In older datestamps the town name was 'Rijswijk (Z.H.)', but in these new series the abbreviation for the province has been left out.

Rijswijk (formerly known as Ryswick in English) is a town and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. Archeological excavations indicate that this area of the coastal dunes was already inhabited some 5500 years ago. The formation of the village Rijswijk took place in the 13th century, and its history was dominated by presence of mansions and estates of the nobility and affluent. Among the many country estates known to have been in Rijswijk are: The Treaty of Ryswick was signed at the Huis ter Nieuwburg in 1697, ending the Nine Years' War. A monument, the Needle of Rijswijk (1792), was erected to commemorate the treaty in the Rijswijk Forest.

Until 1900 Rijswijk remained a relative small community but it became urbanized during the 20th century when it expanded rapidly. Today, Rijswijk's area has almost been completely built-up. The last major development is the new Ypenburg neighbourhood, built on the lands of the former Ypenburg Airfield but this part of Rijswijk was annexed by The Hague in 2002. Rijswijk is part of the Haaglanden conurbation. During the years its built-up area has grown to the point where it has effectively merged with The Hague, even though it is still a separate municipality.

City/town:       Rijswijk

Municipality:   Rijswijk

Area:              14,59 km²

Population:    51.742 (April 2017)

Website:        https://www.rijswijk.nl/

Parcel point

Hoogvliet Rijswijk H. Ravesteijnplein

Hendrik Ravesteijnplein 40

2282 GT  RIJSWIJK ZH
facebook.com/HoogvlietRavesteijnplein

Date sent: 22 June 2017

Date postmark: 22 June 2017

Date received: 23 June 2017

Number of days: 1

Envelope in collection: 192