Lochem has 54 places, of which 39 publish opening hours, 72 per cent. Of those, 79 per cent open on a Sunday and 28 per cent work past eleven. Only 19 per cent cannot be found online.
Businesses close at one midweek and at two at the end of the week; sports canteens and community halls at midnight, with at most six exceptions a year. Shops may open every day from six until ten, but on New Year’s Day, Christmas Day, Easter Sunday and Whit Sunday they stay shut.
The town received its rights on 9 July 1233 from Count Otto the second, and the original charter still lies in the town archive. It had two moats and three gates, the last remains of which were replaced by stone bridges in 1842.
Why the centre looks younger than that date suggests stands in 1615: on 6 April of that year most of the medieval town burned down. What was left standing is the church.
One misunderstanding is worth removing: Lochem is not a Hanseatic town. Those lie along the IJssel, and Lochem lies just beside them. And the Laren belonging to this municipality is not the Laren of the Gooi with its painters’ museum, but an Achterhoek village.
The municipality counts 34,213 residents, of whom 31 per cent are over sixty-five, the oldest profile among these fourteen.