Today this is the Anthanaeum library, dating from 1560. But before that it was the Buiskenshuis, a sisterhouse for women who belonged to the Sisters of the Common Life. Not nuns, but lay women who opted to live a collective spiritual life while staying connected to the city. The library still holds the sisterhouse's manuscripts. Find out more about this place and the movement it was part of in Katharina's free 'City of Books' audio trail, set in 1495.

For Deventer's late medieval inhabitants, St Lebuïn’s was a religious and civic hub, its tower the highest point in town. Charitable fraternities and guilds were keen to have their altars here. For example, the Bergenvaarders, Deventer merchants who sailed as far as Norway. Their coat of arms, a crowned stockfish and imperial eagle, along with an image of their patron St Olof, are still visible on the ceiling inside. Find out more in Katharina's free 'City of Books' audio trail, set in 1495.

The portait above the door gives away the history of this building, now a B&B. It's Desiderius Erasmus, a giant of Renaissance Christian humanism who was sent to the Latin School here as a nine-year-old in 1475 (his B&B was provided by the Brothers of the Common Life). The school was internationally famous, with hundreds of students and an up-to-date humanist programme including Greek. Find out more in Katharina's free 'City of Books' audio trail, set in 1495.

At Geert Grote Huis you'll find out all about the founder of the Modern Devotion and the 'common life' movement. Appropriately, the museum is built on the Heer Florenshuis, one of the Brother houses. Usefully for the brothers, nearby on the Engestraat was Walter de Hoge's shop, the first bookseller in the Netherlands. There you could find religious texts, books on medicine and astronomy, as well as 'paper saints'. Find out more in Katharina's free 'City of Books' audio trail, set in 1495.

This Brink, where you'll find 'de Waag' - the weigh house and now history museum - was once a busy market, as well as the place for public punishment. The pot on the side of the building recalls the cauldron, now inside, used to boil counterfeiters alive. For Geert Grote, meanwhile, the square was the perfect spot, in 1372, to publicly burn his profane texts and reject his old life, before founding the Modern Devotion movement. Find out more in Katharina's free 'City of Books' audio trail.