Street names whisper the city's history. Walking from Central station to the Jan van Eyck academy, an incomprehensibly planned network of streets leads to unexpected corners and alleys. Situated about 180 kilometers from Amsterdam, Maastricht is a different world.

Maybe one could consider Maastricht a true European city – capturing many histories, close to other countries, metropolitan with its wide river and a place of political agreements – the 1992 Maastricht Treaty confirms this identity. As such, it is a cradle of the European Union. But what a city tells is equally dependent on the spectator as well as the narrator. Maastricht as an endless collection of stories, the more different the perspectives the finer the contoures of the image of the city will become. Therefore I've asked researchers at the Jan van Eyck Academy to compare Maastricht with the city they lived before. Their stories and photo's are collected in the publication Comparing the city.