" Het Gooi " is a Dutch region in the southeast of the province of North Holland. The name, also written as ’t Gooi (the definite article is a permanent part of the name), but sometimes supplemented in a literary way or for variation to Gooiland, goes back to the word Gooi, an old variant of gouw. An old name for Gooiland is also Naerdincklant (Naardensland, Land of Naarden), named after the only old city in the region, which for a certain period functioned as the main town and was the seat of the bailiff. At the time of P.C. Hooft, Muiderslot was the seat, but Muiden and Muiderberg themselves did not belong to Het Gooi. Both western cores are now part of the new merged municipality of Gooise Meren, together with the old Gooi places Bussum and Naarden. Because they are now part of Gooise Meren, these two cores Muiden and Muiderberg can now also be implicitly counted as part of Het Gooi.
Historically, Het Gooi or Gooiland is the area located between the Eem and the Vecht on the high sandy soils: the four current municipalities of Huizen, Blaricum, Laren and Hilversum, as well as the former municipalities of Naarden and Bussum. The only later addition was the village of 's-Graveland. Before the foundation of that village (around 1625), this area already belonged to Gooiland. Gooiland traditionally coincided with the area of ​​the common of the so-called erfgooiers. In the 13th century, this special farmers' self-organization (or rather, marke organization) emerged here, which from 1912 onwards was called by law: Vereniging Stad en Lande van Gooiland. (Until 1912, the name was Meeting of the City and Country of Gooiland.)
Het Gooi is quite rare in terms of landscape. The region has a high sandy ridge, the slightly hilly northern extension of the Utrechtse Heuvelrug, of which it forms a sandy and wooded part. The highest point in Het Gooi is the Tafelberg (36.4 m) halfway between Blaricum and Huizen. Furthermore, the landscape is flat on the east and west sides, with mostly meadows.
The many transitions from high to low, and from dry to wet are important for many animals and plants. The modern Gooi was surrounded at the time by treacherous high and low peat areas that formed a natural border and isolated Het Gooi from the Utrecht areas in the south, those along the Vecht in the west and along the Eem in the east. Het Gooi thus offers a great variety of landscape types with waters on the edges, fed by seepage water from the high sandy ridge. There are still deciduous, coniferous, mixed forests, heathland, grassland with sand-digging ditches, estates and unique remains of englands and commons. Many areas are now protected (Naardermeer, Goois Natuurreservaat) and form valuable buffers between the advancing construction. Also unique to Het Gooi is the consistent bordering of many heathlands with green forest edges into one almost uninterrupted coulisse landscape that prevents the view of the construction. In this context, the Goois Natuurreservaat (GNR) likes to speak of an illusion landscape: "The nature reserves of Het Gooi border the urban areas. In the open heathland, space and vastness can still be experienced in many places because the city is hidden from view by forest and because the construction of the city is kept low.
Laren and Blaricum were small, poor farming villages until around 1850. From the arrival of the steam tram in 1882 until around 1950, mainly visual artists settled here, with celebrities such as Anton Mauve (teacher of Vincent van Gogh), Jan Sluijters and Ferdinand Hart Nibbrig. In 1911, the American painter William Singer (1868-1943) settled in Laren. He and his wife were art collectors. Mrs. Singer was also a music lover and a not unworthy pianist. After the death of William Singer (in Norway) and the return of his wife to the Netherlands, she took the initiative to establish the William H. Singer Foundation and with it the museum and theatre of Singer Laren.
Laren and Blaricum are now mainly residential villages for TV stars and the nouveaux riches, who quickly made money in the boom of the 1990s-2000s. Blaricum is now, according to the CBS, the 'richest municipality in the Netherlands'. Laren is the most greying municipality in the Netherlands.
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