A City of Dutch Aesthetics with a Population of Only 100,000 but Two Universities

Located between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Delft is like a forgotten piece of blue porcelain, quietly reflecting the luster of the Dutch Golden Age. This miniature city with a population of fewer than 100,000 people uses Vermeer's canvases and Delftware's glaze to write an eternal aesthetic code on a chessboard of intersecting canals. The old brick walls in front of Vermeer's former residence are still soaked in the hazy light and shadow of "Girl with a Pearl Earring." In the Royal Delft factory, craftsmen use a formula that has remained unchanged for three centuries to prepare cobalt blue pigments. When oriental blue and white porcelain floated across the sea along the Maritime Silk Road, the people of Delft completed a stunning translation with Delft Blue. Those blue-patterned pottery wares on a white background are both a testimony to globalization and a crystallization of local ingenuity. The canal network weaves flowing latitude and longitude lines in the city. The 17th-century gable buildings are reflected on the water surface, forming a time-space fold with the modern architecture of the Delft University of Technology's glass curtain wall. These top European universities of technology and Delft University of Applied Sciences allow the ancient city to be filled with young faces of different skin colors all day long. They discuss quantum physics under medieval arches and deduce architectural models on canal benches. The scholarly atmosphere of intellectuals and the worldly atmosphere of market life are wonderfully integrated in the open-air market. Delft in autumn is most suitable for leisurely strolls. Maple trees along the canal are dyed with a golden-red gradient spectrum, and the 79-meter-high Gothic spire of the old church pierces the stained-glass sky. There is no need to deliberately look for attractions. The handmade pottery workshop you meet at the corner is filled with the smell of glaze, and the freshly baked stroopwafel caramel at the cast-iron bridgehead is unique to Delft. When the twilight dyes the canal into the indigo blue in Vermeer's paintings, the cafes in the Town Hall Square light up with warm yellow lights, and the entire city becomes a living museum that is breathing.