Just as it does today, seventeenth-century Delft abounded with water and was dissected everywhere by canals. The city's name is derived from the word delf which means canal (or delven, to dig a canal). All this water literally makes Delft a conglomerate of small islands, reconnected by streets and bridges both wooden and stone. In the seventeenth century, stone bridges were a mark of the city's prosperity as they were difficult and expensive to construct. Delft's streets are wide, straight, and laid out in an orderly pattern. The Oude Delft, a wide canal, is even flanked on both sides by spacious roads. The trees along the canals were appreciated for their beauty, and, in the summer, for the shade they provided for roads and houses.

Delft, where Vermeer was born and spent his artistic career, was an active and prosperous place in the mid-17th century, its wealth based on its thriving delftware factories, tapestry-weaving ateliers, and breweries. Within Delft’s city walls were picturesque canals and a large market square, which was flanked by the imposing town hall and the soaring steeple of the Nieuwe Kerk (“New Church”). It was also a venerable city with a long and distinguished past. Delft’s strong fortifications, city walls, and medieval gates had furnished defense for more than three centuries and, during the Dutch revolt against Spanish control, had provided refuge for William I, prince of Orange, from 1572 until his death in 1584.

Delftware, also known as Delft Blue, is blue and white pottery, and the city of Delft in the Netherlands was the major center of production.

Delftware is one of the types of tin-glazed earthenware or "faience" in which a white glaze is applied, usually decorated with metal oxides, in particular the cobolt oxide that gives the usual blue, and can withstand high firing temperatures, allowing it to be applied under the glaze. It also forms part of the worldwide family of blue and white pottery, using variations of the plant-based decoration first developed in 14th-century Chinese porcelain, and in great demand in Europe.

Delftware includes pottery objects of all descriptions such as plates, vases, figurines and other ornamental forms and tiles. The start of the style was around 1600, and the most highly regarded period of production is about 1640–1740, but Delftware continues to be produced. In the 17th and 18th centuries Delftware was a major industry, exporting all over Europe.

Delftware ranged from simple household items – plain white earthenware with little or no decoration – to fancy artwork. Most of the Delft factories made sets of jars, the kast-stel set. Pictorial plates were made in abundance, illustrated with religious motifs, native Dutch scenes with windmills and fishing boats, hunting scenes, landscapes and seascapes. Sets of plates were made with the words and music of songs; dessert was served on them and when the plates were clear the company started singing. The Delft potters also made tiles in vast numbers (estimated at eight hundred million) over a period of two hundred years; many Dutch houses still have tiles that were fixed in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Another flourishing industry in Vermeer's day was the tapestry weaving. In 1592 a citizen of Antwerp, the mayor's son François Spierinx, had established this business in Delft. Soon great numbers of "embroiderers" and "tapestry-workers" came from the South. Spierinx' factory was set up in the old Saint Agnes Convent, near the East Gate.

A Triumph Classical Tapestry, Northern Netherlands, 17th century

Much care was bestowed on the weaving of tapestries. They were often great pieces whose measurements can only be expressed in yards. We have already noted that the greatest Dutch artists of that time lent their aid. They not only depicted landscapes, sometimes maps of the plans of towns, but also, and mostly, subjects from local history.

The products of Spierinx, Coppens, and Van der Gucht are real masterpieces. In the first instance they served to decorate the walls of halls and rooms, which for special reasons required hangings: council chambers, governors' and guardians' halls, apartments belonging to civil authorities, and so on. Furthermore they were much liked for use on special occasions, receptions of princes and ambassadors, at official ceremonies, banquets and the like.

The canals were, so to say, the arteries of the town along which all the means of transport and all imports and exports were carried. They were flanked by the dwellings of the merchants and trades people, by goods- sheds and warehouses, public buildings and religious and learned institutions. The market, or the market-place, was always the center where the life of the citizens was concentrated.

But the greatest disaster and no other struck a deeper wound or caused more destruction and damage was the explosion of the gunpowder magazine on October 12th, 1654, in the morning at half-past ten. That powder-house in which the ammunition for the defense of the town was kept, lay hidden amongst the trees behind the Doelen. Dirck van Bleyswijck in his description of the happenings in Delft, published in the year 1667, gives an extensive account of this accident.

There must have been, according to him, "eighty or ninety thousand pounds of gunpowder stored up at the time of the explosion, and this quantity, unfortunately, exploded, with such a horrible rush and force, that the arch of heaven seemed to crack and to burst, the whole earth to split, and hell to open its jaws: in consequence of which not only the town and the whole land of Delft with all her lovely villages shock and trembled, but the whole of Holland rocked from the ghastly rumble.

The houses in towns, boroughs, villages, and hamlets lying some miles away from us, heard the horrible rumble. The sound was heard even as far as Den Helder, yes, on the island of Texel, on the North Sea and in some provinces outside Holland. That (powder) house, which had provided stocks from the days of our Fathers, must now, alas, destroy. The misery and disaster which resulted from it are impossible to describe properly and in proportion to the facts; because so great was the noise, to the surprise of all who heard it far from or near this town, from which, after the clap, they saw such a frightful mixture of smoke and vapor rise, just as if the pools of hell had opened their throats to spew out their poisonous breath over the whole world to cover it and darken it.

This cloud included a great deal of rubble, chalk, stones, beams, and all sorts of flying bits, which later were found strewn around, outside, as well as inside the walls. How the accident really was caused has remained a mystery until now. The powder-house had been completely blown away with its foundations, without leaving a scrap or stick or brick or beam or pole behind, nothing but a pool of water measuring in depth fifteen to sixteen feet."

The results of the explosion must have been terrible, the number of victims was very large.