Oirschot (dialect: Orskot) is a municipality

Municipality

A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...

 and a town in the southern Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

. It is situated 12 km from the city of Eindhoven and 20 km from the city of Tilburg in the province Noord-Brabant (North-Brabant). The municipality has 17,841 inhabitants (1 January 2007).

Population centres

• Oirschot
• Middelbeers
• Oostelbeers
• Spoordonk
• Westelbeers

Sights

There are more than 300 monuments in the municipality Oirschot.
Some of the monuments are:

• The Roman Catholic Church named Sint-Petrus’-Bandenkerk. This 15th and 16th century church is the biggest building in the town of Oirschot and the tower of the church is 73 meters high.
• The old town hall build in 1513 in the centre of town (Oirschot)
• Maria-church (Maria-kerk). A 12th century church in the centre of the town of Oirschot.
• Monastery Nazareth (Klooster Nazareth) with a chapel in Neoroman style (1910).
• Former Brewery De Kroon (Brouwerij de Kroon) built in the year 1773
• Hof van Solms, palace of Arnoldus Feij (or Arnold Fey)
• The Big Chair (De Grote Stoel) the biggest chair of Europe.
• Huize Groenenberg, a very fine house built in 1613.
• Chapel of the Holy Oak (Kapel van de Heilige Eik), stone chapel dated 1606 (earlier there was a wooden chapel at the same place).

Events

• Jazz Festival Oirschot
• Zinderend Oirschot

There are many more festivals in Oirschot every year.

Politics

City Council

The municipal elections on 6 March 2006 resulted in the following make-up of the City Council (17 seats in total):

• Dorpsvisie (local party): 4 seats
• CDA
  Christian Democratic Appeal
  The Christian Democratic Appeal is a centre-right Dutch Christian democratic political party. It suffered severe losses in the 2010 elections and fell from the first to the fourth place...
  
  : 4 seats
• PvdA: 4 seats
• De Gewone Man (local party): 3 seats
• VVD: 2 seats

Mayor

The mayor of the municipality Oirschot is named Ruud Severijns. He is member of the political party PvdA.

External links

• Official Website