On a quiet residential street in Utrecht, a few minutes from the centre by bicycle, stands a small box-shaped house made of white and grey planes, with black frames and touches of red, yellow and blue, which looks as though it had been made from a Mondrian painting. This is the Rietveld Schroder House, built in 1924 and inscribed by UNESCO in 2000 as a masterpiece of the De Stijl movement and of modern architecture. The old centre of Utrecht, with its cathedral tower and its canals, is under two kilometres away.
The house was designed by Gerrit Rietveld, a cabinet-maker turned architect, for Truus Schroder-Schrader, a widow with three children who wanted a house without fixed rooms. The result was extraordinary. The upper floor is one large open space that can be divided by sliding panels, like a stage set, with windows that open at the corner so that walls seem to disappear. Furniture, including Rietveld's famous red and blue chair, is built into the design. Truus lived in the house until her death in 1985, and visitors can see it as she kept it. Tours are small, guided and need to be booked ahead, and photography inside may be restricted.
Cycling is the Dutch way of getting around, and a motorcyclist in Utrecht needs patience. The city has narrow canal streets, one-way systems, trams and a swarm of cyclists with right of way, and parking is limited. The better riding is outside, on the dykes and country roads along the Kromme Rijn, the Vecht with its string of castles and country houses, and through the wooded ridge of the Utrechtse Heuvelrug to the east. The land is flat, the roads are good and speed limits are strict, with plenty of cameras. Wind is constant, rain can arrive at any time, and in winter the dykes can be icy.
Utrecht has nearly three hundred thousand people, all the fuel and food you could want, and countless cafes on the canal-side wharves, where the cellars were once used to store goods. Try a stroopwafel, a caramel waffle, with coffee, or a plate of herring in season. The best months are May, June and September, and a weekday avoids crowds at the house.