Welcome to Baarle, a town split between Baarle-Nassau in the Netherlands and Baarle-Hertog in Belgium, featuring one of the world's most convoluted international borders. Thanks to medieval land swaps, treaties, and sales between the Dukes of Brabant and the Lords of Breda, the border zigzags through streets, gardens, and even individual buildings. To resolve the chaos of living in two sovereign states at once, local law established the Voordeurregel or front door rule.
Under this law, a building's official address, nationality, tax obligations, and municipal jurisdiction are decided entirely by the country in which its primary front door resides. If the international border line slices directly through your living room, you do not pay half your taxes to Brussels and half to Amsterdam; you pay based on which side of the border line your front door swings open. This leads to remarkable loopholes and bizarre local history.
In the past, when Dutch laws required restaurants to close earlier than Belgian ones, patrons merely moved to a table on the Belgian side of the same dining room to continue drinking past curfew. When tax rates differed significantly, property owners would brick up their original front door and carve out a new entrance just a few feet away on the opposite side of the border line, instantly changing their citizenship and tax brackets without ever packing a box. Today, houses split by the border are marked with special door number plates displaying both national flags, and if the border cuts precisely through the front door itself, the building gets two separate addresses—one Dutch and one Belgian.