A dead-flat Dutch peat colony strung along two straight canals, where cheap peat fuel once fed a glass industry that made it 'the glass village' of Drenthe.
Entrepreneurs began digging out the raised bog here around 1823, adding 'Nieuw' ('new') to set the settlement apart from the older village of Buinen nearby. Houses lined up in a long ribbon along two straight canals, dug to float the harvested peat out by barge. Abundant peat fuel drew glassmakers from 1838, and by the late 1800s the works employed up to 1,500 people, making this 'the glass village' of Drenthe. The last factory closed in 1967, and today about 5,000 people (2026) live under enormous skies on treeless, ruler-flat farmland.
The glass began with a partnership: in 1838 the German merchant Johann Christian Anton Thöne and a local notary, Jan Freseman Viëtor, opened a works beside the Dwarsdiep canal. Seven years later some workers walked out after a dispute and set up a rival factory with Jan Meursing, and skilled blowers were shipped in from Germany to man the furnaces. Business boomed when the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 briefly knocked out foreign rivals; by 1906 the Meursing works alone employed 409 men and 172 women, plus children. They made bottles for jenever (Dutch gin) and medicines, then eau-de-cologne flacons for the 4711 and Boldoot brands and bottles for Maggi. When cardboard and plastic took over, the last furnace went cold in 1967 and many workers moved to a Philips tube-glass plant in neighbouring Stadskanaal.
The wealth left marks you can still find. A glass owner built the ornate Villa Flora in 1877–79 and named it for the cast-iron goddess on its front; the Dutch Reformed church of 1853 was enlarged as the trade peaked. In 1974, for the village's 150th birthday, sculptor Onno de Ruijter's stone glassblower was unveiled at the Noorderdiep, and a small free glass museum — re-founded after a 2018 fire — now shows the local bottles and flacons inside the MFA Noorderbreedte community centre. The same building hangs a work by Wobbe Alkema, a geometric-abstract painter born here in 1900.
Beyond the houses the land simply opens. The village is a thin double ribbon along the Noorderdiep and Zuiderdiep, with side-ditches combing off at right angles into fields that run flat to the horizon in every direction. There are no hills and few trees, only brick, water and an enormous sky — gentle, wide-open country best taken slowly by bike.
The making of Nieuw-Buinen
Nieuw-Buinen's glass heritage
From 1838 to 1967 two glassworks turned local peat fuel and cheap labour into bottles and jars — employing up to about 1,500 people and making this 'the glass village' of Drenthe; the free Glasmuseum on the Noorderdiep still displays the blown and moulded glass made here, from jenever and medicine bottles to eau-de-cologne flacons.
De Glasblazer (The Glassblower)
Onno de Ruijter's natural-stone statue of a glassblower, unveiled at the Noorderdiep in 1974 for the village's 150th anniversary — the community's public memorial to the trade that defined it.
The Drentse Monden peat landscape
A textbook peat colony: dead-flat, treeless reclaimed bog laid out in ruler-straight canals and perpendicular ditches, the village strung in a long ribbon under enormous skies — gentle, wide-open cycling country on the peatland fringe of the Hondsrug UNESCO Geopark.
Hunebed D27, Borger
About 8 km southwest, the Netherlands' largest megalithic tomb — some 22.5 m long, built by Funnelbeaker farmers around 3400–3200 BC — stands beside the Hunebedcentrum museum, the signature monument of Drenthe's 'hunebed country'.
Wobbe Alkema
The constructivist painter (1900–1984) was born here; a member of Groningen's De Ploeg group, he became a leading Dutch maker of geometric-abstract art from circles, triangles and rectangles, and a work of his hangs in the MFA Noorderbreedte beside the glass museum.
Villa Flora
An ornate villa of 1877–1879 built by a glass-factory owner and named for the cast-iron statue of the goddess Flora that adorns it — a surviving trace of the wealth the glassworks brought to this canal village.
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