Sint Annaparochie is the principal and largest town of the municipality of Het Bildt

Het Bildt

het Bildt is a municipality in the province of Friesland in the northern Netherlands; its capital is Sint Annaparochie. As of 1 November 2006 it had a population of 10,975. Het Bildt has 15.4 kilometers of coastline...

 in Friesland

Friesland

Friesland is a province in the north of the Netherlands and part of the ancient region of Frisia.Until the end of 1996, the province bore Friesland as its official name. In 1997 this Dutch name lost its official status to the Frisian Fryslân...

, the Netherlands. It lies approximately 15 km northwest of Leeuwarden and has approximately four thousand inhabitants. The town is named after Saint Anne

Saint Anne

Saint Hanna of David's house and line, was the mother of the Virgin Mary and grandmother of Jesus Christ according to Christian and Islamic tradition. English Anne is derived from Greek rendering of her Hebrew name Hannah...

, the mother of Mary

Mary (mother of Jesus)

Mary , commonly referred to as "Saint Mary", "Mother Mary", the "Virgin Mary", the "Blessed Virgin Mary", or "Mary, Mother of God", was a Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee...

.

St. Annaparochie was founded in the 16th century. Though it is located in the province of Friesland, the principal language spoken in the town is Bildts or Dutch, not West Frisian

West Frisian language

West Frisian is a language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands. West Frisian is the name by which this language is usually known outside the Netherlands, to distinguish it from the closely related Frisian languages of Saterland Frisian and North Frisian,...

. Rembrandt was married in the parish church in St. Annaparochie in 1634.

There was a station on the North Friesland Railway which opened in 1902 and closed to passengers in May 1935. It reopened to passengers in May 1940 and closed to passengers again in October 1942. Final closure took place in May 1966.