The Castles and country houses are generally portrayed as quintessentially rural; their intimate relationship with towns and cities is often overlooked. This symposium payed attention to the many ways in which castles and country houses are intrinsically linked with cities and city life. The relationship between the country house and the city is evident in the seasonal changes of life in cities and country houses, in the flow of people and objects travelling between the city home and the country houses, in agricultural goods transported from the country estates to the city, in early modern nobles and regents emulating archaic ideals about country life, and in country houses turned into city parks. The Netherlands as an early centre of urbanism served as one, but not the only, case study at the conference.
