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Netherlands

5 city guides · Europe

Cities in Netherlands (5)

Europe
🇳🇱 Netherlands

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the most liveable city in Europe — a compact (population 930,000) capital of canals, gabled townhouses and Golden Age culture, where cycling is the dominant form of transport, the art museums are among the finest in the world, and the spirit of tolerance and internationalism that made the Dutch Republic the most advanced civilization of the 17th century is still visible in the city's character. The 17th-century Canal Ring (UNESCO — the Grachtengordel, the semicircular web of four main canals: Singel, Herengracht, Keizersgracht, Prinsengracht — lined with 1,550 monumental buildings built by VOC merchants) is one of the greatest urban planning achievements in history: built in 2 decades (1613–1662) on reclaimed peat bog. The Rijksmuseum (Rembrandt's Night Watch, Vermeer's Milkmaid) and the Van Gogh Museum (the largest collection of Van Gogh in the world) are reason enough to visit. The Anne Frank House, the herring from a street cart, the brown cafés and the gezelligheid (the Dutch concept of cosy togetherness) are what make you want to stay.

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🇳🇱 Netherlands

Eindhoven

Eindhoven (population 240,000) is the most design-forward and the most technology-innovation-concentrated single city in the Netherlands — the global headquarters of Philips (the most precisely Philips-origin-headquartered single Dutch electronics empire: Philips founded in Eindhoven in 1891 — the most transformatively industrialised single Dutch city by a single company in the history of Dutch industrialisation). The Dutch Design Week (DDW — the most internationally significant single design week event in Northern Europe: the most participant-diverse and the most design-exhibition-comprehensive single Northern European design festival: held every October in Eindhoven), the DAF Museum (the most complete single Dutch automotive heritage museum: the Eindhoven truck and car company DAF — the most precisely continuously-variable-transmission-inventing single Dutch car manufacturer), the Strijp-S creative district (the most impressively industrial-to-creative single Dutch urban regeneration project: the former Philips industrial campus transformed into the most culturally productive single creative quarter in the Netherlands) and Van Abbe Museum (the most cutting-edge single contemporary art museum in the Dutch province of North Brabant).

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Maastricht

Maastricht (population 123,000 in the city; 430,000 in the metropolitan area) is the oldest and most distinctive city in the Netherlands — a city that feels entirely un-Dutch: warm-toned limestone buildings (instead of Amsterdam red brick), Roman foundations (Maastricht was one of the most important Roman cities in the Low Countries: the Roman fort of Trajectum ad Mosam on the Maas River, established 50 BCE by Julius Caesar's armies), and a deeply Burgundian (French and Belgian-influenced) culture that makes Maastricht the most cosmopolitan and hedonistic city in the Netherlands. The Treaty of Maastricht (February 7, 1992 — signed in Maastricht's Vrijthof square) established the European Union, introduced the single European currency (the euro, introduced 2002), created EU citizenship, and defined the Schengen Area (the borderless travel zone in Europe): Maastricht is therefore the birthplace of the European Union as we know it. The Sint Servaasbrug (the oldest bridge in the Netherlands: first built in Roman times; the current medieval bridge dates from 1280 CE) crosses the Maas River to the Wijck district. The TEFAF Maastricht (the Temple of the European Fine Art Fair — the most important art fair in the world: held annually in March in the Maastricht Exposition and Convention Centre (MECC); USD 1+ billion in art transactions per year) makes Maastricht the art market capital of Europe every March. The Caves of Saint Pietersberg (St. Pietersberg — the limestone hill to the south of the city: 20,000m of tunnels carved into the Maastricht limestone (the 'mergel' — the soft Maastrichtian limestone that was quarried for building stone for 2,000 years; the Maastricht Cathedral, the buildings of the old city, and many Belgian and Dutch churches were built from this stone)). Best months: April–October.

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Rotterdam

Rotterdam is the largest port in Europe (the Port of Rotterdam handles 441 million tonnes of cargo per year, 5 times the volume of the next-largest European port, Antwerp) and the most architecturally adventurous city in Europe — a city that was almost completely destroyed by German bombing on May 14, 1940 (the Rotterdam Blitz, a deliberate terror bombing of the city centre that killed 900 civilians, destroyed 25,000 houses and 24,000 buildings, and prompted the Netherlands to surrender the following day) and rebuilt from scratch in the 1950s-70s, then reborn as an experimental architecture laboratory from the 1980s to the present. The result is a city that looks like no other European city: the Cube Houses (Kubuswoningen, 1984, architect Piet Blom — yellow-tinted cubes tilted 45° and balanced on concrete hexagonal stalks, inhabited residences), the Market Hall (Markthal, 2014, a 228-apartment horseshoe-shaped building with a gigantic arch hall underneath containing the finest food market in the Netherlands, the ceiling covered in a 11,000 m² photographic artwork of food and insects), the Erasmus Bridge (the Swan, 1996, a single asymmetric pylon cable-stay bridge over the Maas River, the symbol of modern Rotterdam), the De Rotterdam mixed-use tower (2013, Rem Koolhaas/OMA, three interconnected towers containing a hotel, offices and apartments), and the Rotterdam Centraal Station (2014, a titanium-clad angular canopy over the finest train station building in the Netherlands). Rotterdam is the birthplace of Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536, the humanist philosopher who wrote "In Praise of Folly" and was the first to propose moderate, rational Christian reform before Luther — the Erasmus Bridge and Erasmus University are named after him) and the first home port of Dutch East India Company (VOC) ships.

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The Hague

The Hague (Den Haag — 's-Gravenhage in formal Dutch, "the Count's Wood" — the seat of the Dutch government and the location of the royal residence, despite Amsterdam being the constitutional capital; population 560,000 city, 1.1 million greater metropolitan area) is the political capital of the Netherlands and the global capital of international law and justice. The Peace Palace (Vredespaleis — built 1913 with a $1.5 million donation from Andrew Carnegie (the largest private charitable donation to international peace in history to that date)) houses the International Court of Justice (the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, adjudicating disputes between sovereign states), the Permanent Court of Arbitration (founded 1899 — the world's oldest international dispute resolution institution) and the Hague Academy of International Law. The Hague is home to the International Criminal Court (ICC — established 2002, the world's first permanent international criminal court), the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY — which prosecuted war crimes from the 1990s Balkan conflicts; the conviction of Slobodan Milošević would have been the most significant of these, but he died in custody in 2006 before verdict), and Europol, Eurojust and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The greatest cultural institution is the Mauritshuis (a 17th-century palace housing the finest collection of Dutch Golden Age painting in the world, including Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring (c.1665 — the most recognisable Dutch painting after Rembrandt's Night Watch) and Rembrandt van Rijn's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632)). The Binnenhof (the medieval parliamentary complex in the city centre — the oldest parliament buildings still in continuous legislative use in the world) has been the seat of Dutch government since 1446.

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