The Devil's Stone

Somewhere along the Oudegracht, half-hidden in the ground, sits a large stone with a chain attached to it. Easy to trip over if you're not paying attention. Locals call it the devil's stone, and once you hear why, the name makes perfect sense.

The stone has been sitting here since at least 1520, and photos from 1860 already show it exactly where you see it now. One explanation is straightforwardly practical: it's a schamp stone, a protective boulder meant to stop cart wheels and wagons from clipping the corner of the adjacent building. Medieval Utrecht was a busy trading city, and the Oudegracht was its commercial heartbeat, so the streets saw plenty of heavy traffic.

But the practical story was never quite enough for people around here. According to local legend, the devil himself used to play with the stone at night, hurling it around until the ground shook and the whole neighborhood rattled in their beds. Tired of the noise, the residents chained it to the building to keep it in place.

Whether that actually worked is unclear, but the chain is still there, so maybe nobody wanted to take the risk of finding out.