National Monument to the North Sea floods of 1953

50 years after the event, four Phoenix caissons were declared the national monument to the 1953 North Sea floods. The surrounding area was also declared part of the national monument; an area dominated by the effects of the flood: coves, inlets, the remains of old sea dikes and new dike that were constructed directly after the floods struck on 1 February 1953.

The municipality of Schouwen-Duiveland commissioned artist Gust Romijn to design a monument to the victims of the floods. The tall, slender stone pillar topped with crumbling stone and broken by waves expresses the destructive force of the sea. The inscription on the monument reads: the water, the storm, the silence. This inscription was written by Angeline van Asten, selected by a jury from an open call for inscriptions from the island’s residents.

Gust Romijn was finally given the opportunity to realise his design in 1983. The idea had been a scale model for quite some time.