Roman and Celtic coins and remains of a Roman bridge across the river Meuse have been found in Venlo; it may have been the settlement known as Sablones on the Roman road connecting Maastricht with Xanten. Blerick, on the west bank, was known as Blariacum.
Documents from the 9th century mention Venlo as a trade post; it developed into one of the more important ones in the Meuse-Rhine area, receiving city rights in 1343, and becoming a member of the Hanseatic League in 1375.
Because of its strategic importance, the city of Venlo was besieged several times. The most significant siege was that of 1702, carried on by Menno van Coehoorn. Consequently, Venlo was incorporated into the Generaliteitslanden of the United Provinces and later became part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Venlo in the Second World War
On November 9, 1939, two British Intelligence Service agents were kidnapped by the Sicherheitsdienst in what became known as the Venlo Incident. The incident was used by the Nazis to link Great Britain to Georg Elser's failed assassination of Hitler at theBurgerbraukeller two days before and to justify their later invasion of the Netherlands, a neutral country, on 10 May 1940.
Because Venlo had both a road and a rail bridge over the river Meuse River ("Maas" in Dutch) the city was severely damaged during several bomb raids (13 October – 19 November 1944) on those bridges at the end of the war. The Allied forces made 13 attempts to destroy the bridges to cut the German supply lines and block a retreat of the German army across the river. These failed, and it was the retreating German troops who in the end blew up the bridges in an attempt to stop the allied advance. Allied forces liberated Venlo from the east, from inside Germany itself.
About 300 people were killed due to those raids. The raids also cost Venlo a major part of its historical buildings. However, some old buildings,
