plenary Holland: Maastricht

The New Old World A welcoming medieval city on the Meuse river (right), Maastricht offers a variety of unique venues — including, right on the border with Belgium, Château Neercanne (above).

exhibition space and upgrade its tech- nological infrastructure. Then a guide from Den Haag Mar-

keting collected me for a fast-moving tour of the old city. After two flawless summer days, the sky had reverted to Holland’s usual iron-gray ceiling, but the weather was still mild as we hopped a tram that took us into the heart of town. Our first stop: the Hotel Des Indes, a 92-room property with 4,200 square feet of meeting space that was built as a palace in 1858. Gorgeously, almost sin- fully appointed, the lemon-yellow grand dame sits on Lange Voorhout square, a famous part of The Hague’s diplomatic community that’s home to numerous embassies, including those of the United States and Great Britain. In just a few short blocks, we moved

from the city’s past into its glimmering present, visiting the cutting-edge con- temporary Hilton The Hague. Sharp and professional, the 195-room Hilton offers four boardrooms, five meeting rooms, and a 3,520-square-foot ballroom. That would be my last impression of The Hague, and it was perfect: a

22 PCMA CONVENE SEPTEMBER 2013

flawlessly modern venue perched amid history itself, a new idea standing on the shoulders of an old world. Little did I know on my train ride that afternoon, two- and-a-half hours southeast, to the very bottom of Hol-

land, that when it came to the old world, I had barely scratched the surface.

MAASTRICHT: ON THE BORDER Straddling the Meuse (known in Dutch as the Maas) river, up against the bor- der with Belgium, an easy stone’s throw from Germany, Maastricht is a medi- eval city whose ease and warmth belie a formidable network for business meet- ings. Both of those aspects revealed themselves quickly during my first day in the destination. The Maastricht Convention Bureau

(maastrichtconventionbureau.com) picked me up at the train station and took me right to the Maastricht Exhi- bition & Congress Centre (MECC Maastricht). The sleek facility has more than 320,000 square feet of exhibition

space, 30 breakout rooms, and two audi- toriums that combined can seat 1,650 people. Just as impressive, MECC Maas- tricht is directly next to the Maastricht Health Campus, an ambitious complex of clinics, research labs, and educa- tion institutions that offer a wealth of resources for medical conferences. From there we left town, driving

through the intensely green Jeker valley and up to Château Neercanne, a 17th- century castle in the hills overlooking Belgium that today offers a variety of unique event spaces, including Baroque gardens, terraces, conference and ban- quet rooms, a restaurant, and, burrowed into the cliffs behind the château, a series of cool, atmospheric wine cellars. Château Neercanne is one of a hand- ful of properties owned by Camille

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