Johannes Huibert Prins compiled this majestic imaginary town square by combining various actual and fictitious buildings. He drew the figures with meticulous precision, as well as the façades, the cobblestones and even the grouting of the brickwork. Some contemporaries thought the detail a little overdone. For example, one critic wrote in 1817 that Prins had rendered the masonry too elaborately and that it never really looked like that when reduced in size.