Van Gogh: Zundert to Auvers-sur-Oise

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Groot-Zundert, in North Brabant, the son of a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. Vincent did not paint while he lived here, though he drew some sketches. The birth house itself is gone, as it was too dilapidated to preserve, but a plaque on the spot still commemorates his birth, and the Vincent van Gogh house opened here in August 2008.

Visitor guidance: The Vincent van Gogh house and the birth plaque are on the Markt.

Nuenen was a rural town home to many farmers, labourers and weavers, and they became Vincent's subjects. His father died of a heart attack on 26 March 1885. From 13 April until the beginning of May that year Vincent worked on The Potato Eaters, wanting it to show people who "have tilled the earth themselves with these hands they are putting in the dish". In his Nuenen years he completed nearly 200 oil paintings, along with numerous drawings and watercolours.

Location precision: The sources place the painting in Nuenen but no single site; the pin marks the town.

In November 1885 Vincent moved to Antwerp and rented a room above a paint dealer's shop in the rue des Images, today Lange Beeldekensstraat. He lived in poverty; by February 1886 he could remember eating only six hot meals since the previous May. He bought Japanese woodcuts in the docklands, and in January 1886 enrolled in painting and drawing at the Antwerp Academy.

Location precision: The street is named but the exact house is not; the pin marks Lange Beeldekensstraat.

On 1 May 1888 Vincent signed a lease for four rooms at 2 Place Lamartine, at 15 francs a month, unfurnished. The canvases he painted that year were all intended for the decoration of this Yellow House, and in Arles he completed 200 paintings and more than 100 drawings and watercolours. The Yellow House itself no longer exists; a placard on the square commemorates where it stood.

Location precision: The house is demolished; the pin marks the Place Lamartine area, not the building.

Visitor guidance: Only a placard marks the former site at Place Lamartine.

Vincent entered the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum on 8 May 1889. It was a former monastery that catered to the wealthy, and he had two rooms with barred windows, one used as a studio. The clinic and its garden became the main subjects of his paintings. On supervised walks he painted cypresses and olive trees.

Vincent arrived in Auvers on 20 May 1890 and rented room 5, a tiny attic room of 75 square feet, at the Auberge Ravoux. Wounded in late July, he was able to walk back to the inn, where two doctors attended him. He died on 29 July 1890 and was buried on 30 July in the municipal cemetery of Auvers. The nails on which he hung his canvases are still in the wall, and the inn is now a restaurant serving meals inspired by nineteenth-century regional cuisine.

Visitor guidance: The inn is a restaurant; check ahead about seeing room 5.