“The Siege of Alkmaar is such an important part of Dutch history that it should never be forgotten,” says Piet Bruinooge, chairman of the Regionaal Archief Alkmaar, in the Noord-Hollands Dagblad (13-12-2007). But the acidic iron gall ink slowly but surely eats its way through the archive collection of how the Spanish siege of Alkmaar in 1573 was broken.

Soon, however, the paper, suffering from autonomous decay, shall be restored as part of the country wide restoration project Metamorfoze. Afterwards, the fragile archive elements shall be digitized by Pictura to preserve and unlock the sixteenth century writings for everyone. Pictura will commence work on this beautiful new assignment in the near future.

The collection that will eventually become a part of the image bank of the Regionaal Archief at Alkmaar is of a very diverse nature, according to the Regionaal Archief: “A part of the collection is correspondence. The ‘polsstokbriefjes’ have great capacity to capture one’s imagination. They are secret correspondence that was smuggled through the Spanish ranks by city carpenter Van der Mey. They get their name from the fact that he hid them in a hollowed out pole vault. The correspondence that reached the city council in the year of the siege, 1573, was completely preserved. Aside from letters, bills are an important part of the siege correspondence. Especially the city bills of circa 1573. The bills enable us to figure out exactly what was done to and how much it cost to strengthen the city’s fortifications. The last part of the archive is formed by charters that refer to the purchase of houses in the city for the fortifications. The new fortifications of Alkmaar, constructed by order of Willem of Orange, laid the foundation for the so-called ‘Oudhollandse verdedigingsstelsel’ or old-Dutch defense system which was to be used for many cities and fortifications in the Republic.” All the pieces in the collection, with a total shelf length of 1.5 meters, will be scanned by Pictura.