Netherlands · NL

D42

Hunebed D42 is a stone-age tomb chamber on the open es land west of Emmen, in the Dutch province of Drenthe — and one of the oldest monuments you can stand beside anywhere in the Netherlands. Raised by the Funnel Beaker people around five thousand years ago, it belongs to the same family of megalithic graves that dots this corner of the country, built from huge glacial boulders carried here by Ice Age glaciers and dragged into place by Neolithic farmers. D42 counts among the largest hunebedden in the Netherlands, originally some 16.8 metres long and 4.5 metres wide, but time and stone-collectors have left it beautifully fragmentary. Only four of its original capstones survive, two still resting on their supports, with rows of side stones and a closing stone long gone — their former positions now traced by cement casts set into the ground. The single most memorable thing about D42, though, is a great oak that grows right in the middle of the burial chamber, wreathing the stones in a scene that feels pulled from a fairy tale.