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It was raining. As we stood outside Haarlem’s grand railway station, my son Jack and I could just make out the shape of our hotel through the drifting water. We ran across the street and while we checked in the receptionist took pleasure in telling us that rain was forecast for the whole weekend. We borrowed the hotel umbrella, a dainty thing designed for a Barbie doll, and set off to explore the town.

By the time we had crossed the Nieuwe Gracht (New Canal) and walked into the centre, a network of dignified, narrow streets and gabled roofs, the rain had ceased. A rich, salty, slightly fetid odour radiated from the scores of yellow and orange cheeses, some as big as motor wheels, heaped up and flattening in its open doorway. A step away we were reminded that we were not only in Holland but the home town of the painter Frans Hals. We came across a small statue in the street derived from perhaps his strangest painting, ‘Malle Babbe’, which shows a grimacing peasant woman with an owl on her shoulder. The rain had resumed and we decided to take refuge in the Hals Museum, no more than a five minute dash away. When we reached the building, once a hostel for old men and dignified by a coat of arms composed of crossed crutches, we discovered that the place did not open for another half hour. It was a low moment.

We retired to a café and studied our map. Haarlem was sacked in 1572 by the Spanish and much of its population was massacred. But after William of Orange recaptured it five years later, it was rebuilt and went on to be very prosperous in the 17th century. The oldest parts of the town are contained within an artificial island bounded by three straight canals whose efforts to form a square are frustrated by the sinuous course of the river Spaarne on its fourth, eastern side. For a Dutch town of its size (150,000 people) Haarlem is unusual in having very little water to beautify its streets, since only one canal, the Bakenessergracht, cuts across the central island.

T he Grote Markt, on the other hand, boasts everything that the main square of a wealthy town should possess. We walked there next under a grey but brightening sky and found a large space occupied by mobile shops and old-fashioned stalls under canvas, and surrounded by Gothic and Renaissance buildings. Standing at its western end is the Stadhuis (town hall), which has been frequently redesigned and now presents a gloriously miscellaneous façade that includes a balcony and an arcade, gables and battlements, niches and tablets, the whole thing topped off by an octagonal tower, itself topped by a wooden lantern full of bells. On the opposite side of the square lowers the mighty church of St Bavo, an edifice so enormous it has provided a habitat among its buttresses for a row of small shops and even a couple of houses. Inside, however, the church is much less forbidding and instead of seeming to bear down, its white walls and pillars soar upwards. This effect is enhanced by its magnificent organ, which rises from floor to roof. Its pipes, of which there are 5000 in all, are bunched in clusters like missiles, though there is nothing warlike about the gods and cherubim that roost among its tiers, blowing trumpets and banging drums. There was no sign of the organist, but he was concealed somewhere in the command nodule of his music arsenal, for the flagstones beneath our feet suddenly began to quake as he played a chord of bass notes.

Taking a new route and walking now in warm sunshine, we returned to the Hals Museum. Jack, nearly 18, is as yet agnostic in his attitude to High Art, but he looked with interest, as did I, at the work of the modern Dutch artists, especially a deliciously attenuated redhead wearing only poppy-coloured lipstick, painted by Jan Sluiters. Nonetheless, his worst suspicions were confirmed when he stood in front of Hals’ huge group portraits of worthy burghers dressed up as soldiers and tucking into banquets. Even I, the original culture vulture, could not raise much enthusiasm, though I was overwhelmed by his picture of the Regentesses of the Old Men’s Home, where he was an inmate himself. This portrait of four old women and their female servant, all dressed in black with white lace caps and collars, is one of the very few - indeed, I cannot think of another - to show women transacting business.

By now we had earned our lunch, which we ate in the Café 1900 on Barteljorisstraat. The place had been precisely named, because its décor was a period piece of Art Nouveau tiles on the walls, glass partitions and philanderers’ alcoves with padded banquettes. Above our heads a turn-of-the-century contraption kept four fans turning by means of a long spindle and a set of drooping canvas belts. On our way again, we walked to the oldest part of the town, which lies beside the Bakenessergracht. As Haarlem’s only inner canal, it did a fine job of looking picturesque, with its plane trees, boats and gabled houses. Clustered round the barn-like Walloon church was a maze of crooked alleyways and secretive courts, among them a three-sided square where the gold and silversmiths once had their guild. The church itself, dating from the 14th century and the oldest in Haarlem, had a forbidding air, but in its shadow we discovered the town’s red light district, which seemed to consist of a single window at street level, marked by a classic red lamp, and displaying a pair of chairs upholstered in pink velvet. They were unoccupied.

We crossed the canal and walked past the Bakenesser church whose spire and lantern, painted white, hovered like a mysterious sign over the whole district. The shops along the edge of the River Spaarne are famous for their antiques, but we chose to look at those in the Teylers Museum. The first to be founded in Holland, it holds a wonderfully mixed collection in a house that is worth visiting for its own sake. We spent most of the time on the scientific instruments. They were dominated by a gigantic 18th century electrical generator , an apparatus that incorporated two huge glass discs, an assortment of brass spheres and tubes, as well as a pair of cranks requiring the power of two men. It was a beautiful object, which to the uninitiated looked more sculptural than mechanical.

The sun was now positively hot and we were able to sit outside at a café table overlooking the river. I offered Jack a game of chess. “I’ll only thrash you,” he said wearily. After he had done so, we set off on our last tour of the day I search of the hofjes, or courts of almshouses, that are the pride of Haarlem’s tourist literature. The Teylershofje, next to the museum, proved to be typical, it not as old as most. An austere classical quadrangle fronted by a daunting gateway contained a dozen houses that were elegant though, but hardly cosy, and Iwas grateful I did judge them fairly; however, we came across a handful of others that all seemed to share the gracefulness of architecture and the same chilliness.

The following day was Sunday. Jack and I decided to review Haarlem by following one of the printed walks provided by the tourist office. The sun shone and the streets were fresh and quiet, apart from the distant chiming of a church bell. Our guide took us on a route that was mostly familiar - the red light was still lit and the pink chairs still empty - though it did show us a few new buildings, notably a bookshop trading under the sign of The Golden Salmon in a 17th century house with a narrow gable as steep as a staircase. We walked along the bank of the large Leidse Vaart canal, whose bank was softened with weeping willows, and into a park close to the station. “I’m getting to like this town more and more”, Jack announced as we rested on a bench. My feelings exactly.

Read more travel writing by Fraser Harrison