LELYSTAD

Lelystad: translation

City founded in 1966 in the recently reclaimed land of the Flevopolder in the former Zuiderzee, now the IJsselmeer. The town was named after Cornelis Lely (1854–1929), the engineer and politi cian who drafted the plans for the reclamation of the Zuiderzee. Lelystad, with about 71,000 inhabitants, is partly oriented to the agrarian sector. As capital of the province of Flevoland, it is also an administrative center, and it houses the Bataviawerf (shipyard), an important museum of archaeology where many remnants of ships and other objects found at the bottom of the former sea are exhibited. It is also a real shipyard, where replicas are built of ships of the Dutch East India Company. In 2003, the Aviodrome aviation museum was transported from Schiphol Airport to the airport at Lelystad.