The story
Christmas Town Valkenburg in Valkenburg
Valkenburg markets itself each winter as a Christmas Town, hosting several distinct Christmas markets across the hilly Limburg town, most famously an underground market held inside the old marl caves. Running roughly from late November into early January, the cave market combines seasonal stalls with the unusual atmosphere of shopping beneath the earth.
Valkenburg sits in an unusually hilly corner of the Netherlands, in the southern province of Limburg, where centuries of quarrying for marl, a soft limestone used in local building construction, left behind an extensive network of underground caves beneath the town.