Maliebaan
Maliebaan

This street is not just a pretty sight, it also has a lot of history to it.

The Maliebaan is a street that is 1 kilometre long with stunning, old trees accompanying it on both sides. In summer the trees bloom beautifully making it a green gateway for the cars, bikes and pedestrians coming through, and later in the year the trees turn into the colours of autumn. On the Maliebaan there are impressive mansions on both sides where nowadays a lot of companies are based.

The street thanks its name to the Golden Age, where guests of the university, such as René Descrates, were complaining about the boredom of the city. The university and the students thought the same and decided to start playing malie, a game in which a wooden ball is hit with a wooden stick on a long track. A malie track was created and that’s where the street got its name from (baan meaning track or lane).

• In 1885 the first biking lane of the Netherlands was created on the Maliebaan and later the street became a place where the Nationalist Social Movement got their headquarters in World War II.
• In 1979 the Advisory Committee for Visual Arts advised the city to realise a sculpture route in Utrecht, which was placed on the Maliebaan.
• In the light of feminism, it was decided to only post images of female artists. In 1983, the first four images were posted. The sculpture route now has seventeen sculptures.