On Friday mornings, in season, a bell rings at 10 a.m. on Waagplein Square and two balls of cheese burst forth... that is the signal. Carriers in white costume and coloured straw hats then race at a clip, their poles laden with golden wheels, beneath the eyes of crowds from everywhere. Alkmaar thus perpetuates the oldest and largest cheese market of the Netherlands, a commercial ritual whose rules have changed little over four centuries. Cruise river boats moor alongside the canal, a few minutes' walk from this open-air theatre.

A Market That Is Also a Craft

The spectacle of Waagplein is no reconstruction: the cheeses are negotiated for real, by handclap, between carriers, weighers and merchants distributed among rival confraternities recognisable by the colour of their hats. The Public Weighing building, the Waag, a former fourteenth-century hospice converted to commerce, dominates the square with its ornate tower; it now houses the cheese museum, where you learn how Gouda and Edam built the region's fortune. The market is held Friday mornings, from late March to late September; arrive early to be well positioned along the barriers. Outside these hours, the square remains the beating heart of the city, surrounded by terraces.

More Than 500 Monuments in a Small Space

Alkmaar ranks among the Netherlands' densest historic centres: more than 500 listed buildings in a core you can walk across in a quarter-hour. Langestraat Street lines its shops beneath stepped gables; the great Church of Saint Lawrence, Gothic and luminous, preserves an organ whose reputation crosses frontiers; the side lanes hide flowered hospice courtyards where silence falls suddenly. Everywhere, cheese-shop displays, naturally, but also bookshops, antique dealers and brown cafés in the Dutch style, dark and welcoming.

The Canals: On Foot or by Boat

The old city wraps itself in a ring of canals inherited from its fortifications. Following the quays of Mient and Oudegracht, you pass Golden Age façades reflecting in calm water, drawbridges and lived-in barges. Small boats offer guided tours of about an hour, a restful way to grasp the city's geography and pass under its lowest bridges, head bent obligatory. The ramparts converted to park on the west side complete the walk with their mills.

• Traditional market: Friday mornings, late March to late September, Waagplein Square
• Cheese museum: in the Waag, at Waagplein
• Church of Saint Lawrence: at the end of Langestraat
• Boat tours: landing points downtown, about an hour

The Dutch Pause

Impossible to leave without tasting what makes the place renowned. The cheese shops downtown willingly offer tastings: young or aged Gouda, varieties with caraway or fenugrec, to carry vacuum-sealed for the rest of the voyage. Those with a sweet tooth will settle for a warm stroopwafel waffle, and the curious for a glass of local beer in a café facing the canal, watching the bicycles pass—which are here infrastructure as much as a way of life.

Alkmaar offers the Holland one hopes for, canals, gables, golden wheels, without Amsterdam's crowds though it is nearby. You return aboard replaying the carriers' race and the scent of the cheese shops, with the feeling of having witnessed not a spectacle for travellers, but a tradition that would have continued exactly the same without witnesses.