Rotterdam lost its entire heart in fourteen minutes of Luftwaffe bombing in 1940. What remains is a city of survivors: a 15th-century church rebuilt from ruins, a preserved harbour of 1800s warehouses, and monuments that refuse to let anyone forget.
The only surviving late-Gothic building in the centre, begun 1449 and gutted in 1940 — it stood roofless until 1968. Inside: three Marcussen organs, bronze doors by Giacomo Manzù, and Erasmus's baptismal link. Open Tue–Sat 10:00–17:00.
Rotterdam's only pre-war quarter, spared by the bombing. The 1389 harbour was where the Pilgrim Fathers boarded the Speedwell on 22 July 1620 and where Admiral Piet Hein was born in 1577. Free to walk; gabled merchant houses line Voorhaven.
The 1665 Schielandshuis is one of only two 17th-century buildings left standing in the centre, built for the water board that governed the polders. Its Dutch-classicist façade survived the firestorm; interiors date from the 1864 rebuild after a fire.
Founded 1874 by Prince Hendrik, holding 850,000 objects on 700 years of Dutch shipping. The outdoor Leuvehaven fleet includes the 1854 iron warship Buffel, restored with its officers' mahogany cabins. Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00.
Ossip Zadkine's 1953 bronze at Plein 1940 shows a figure with its heart torn out, arms raised against the sky — the definitive memorial to 14 May 1940, when 25,000 homes burned and 850 people died. Standing 6.5 m, unveiled 15 May 1953.
The wall on Stieltjesstraat lists 6,700 names of Rotterdam Jews assembled at Shed 24 and sent to Westerbork between 1942 and 1944. A children's monument of names stands beside it. Free, always open, rarely more than a few visitors.
A 1933 Nieuwe Bouwen villa by Brinkman & Van der Vlugt for a Van Nelle director, restored to its original state with tubular steel furniture and a 1930s intercom. One of the few interwar interiors that survived intact. Tue–Sun 11:00–17:00.
UNESCO World Heritage since 2014 and called the most beautiful factory in the world by Le Corbusier. Built 1925–31 in steel and glass for tobacco, coffee and tea, with glazed conveyor bridges crossing above the site at Van Nelleweg 1.
The 1901 art nouveau headquarters of the Holland America Line on Wilhelminakade, from whose quays roughly 1 million Europeans sailed to Ellis Island between 1873 and 1971. The boardroom and telegraph office are preserved as public rooms.
The emigration quay where the SS Rotterdam and Nieuw Amsterdam berthed. Bronze suitcases and the Landverhuizers plaques mark the boarding points; the 1959 SS Rotterdam itself lies moored across the water at Katendrecht as a museum ship.
The peninsula housed Europe's oldest Chinatown from 1911, when Chinese sailors were recruited as strikebreakers by shipping lines, alongside a notorious sailors' red-light district. Deli Chinese boarding houses on Delistraat still carry the names.
The 1898 Witte Huis was Europe's first skyscraper at 43 m and ten storeys, built on 1,000 wooden piles and one of the few structures upright after 14 May 1940. It overlooks the Oudehaven, dug in 1350 as the city's original harbour.