Experiencing Van Gogh’s Heritage: A Case Study

In view of Vicent Van Gogh’s 125 th death anniversary in 2015, the Regional council West Brabant and the city of Breda with its surroundings commissioned our university the drafting of a tourism development plan for the Dutch region of West Brabant using Van Gogh as a brand image. Van Gogh the artist is mostly associated to Amsterdam, where the museum named after him and collecting most of his work is located. Or to France, where he spent the last years of his life, part of which hospitalised in a psychiatric institution, and where he eventually took his own life in Auvers-sur Oise in 1890. But few know that Van Gogh was born in Zundert, a small village in West Brabant, and spent his early life from child till young adulthood in various places in Brabant.