Rotterdam: Cube Houses, Harbour Cranes & a City That Rebuilt Itself Forward

Rotterdam is what happens when a city loses its medieval centre in a single afternoon and decides, on reflection, not to fake one back. On 14 May 1940 the Luftwaffe flattened the heart of the city in roughly fifteen minutes. What rose afterwards, slowly and then quickly, is the most architecturally adventurous city in the Netherlands and probably one of the most architecturally adventurous in Europe. Stepping off the train at Rotterdam Centraal—itself an enormous, faceted, silver wedge of a station—you are immediately somewhere that looks nothing at all like Amsterdam, and that is the entire point.

We came down by train from Amsterdam for two nights, half-expecting to find a sober industrial counterpoint to do a long lunch in and tick off. We left wishing we'd given it three. Rotterdam is gritty and confident and a bit cooler than you, and it has been quietly making this case for fifty years.

Day 1
The Cube Houses: Living Inside an Idea

The Kubuswoningen—the Cube Houses—were finished in 1984 to a design by Piet Blom, who decided that a residential block should look like a forest of tilted yellow cubes balanced on stalks. There are 38 of them, occupied, with one preserved as the Show Cube museum so you can go inside and see what it is actually like to live in a room with no vertical walls. Short answer: cramped, oddly cosy, and very clearly built by someone who was more interested in the idea than the furniture-buying. We loved it.

Standing underneath the cubes, looking up at the geometry, is also one of those satisfying urban moments where the architecture genuinely refuses to do what your eye expects. Five minutes' walk away is the Markthal, a 2014 horseshoe of an apartment block arched over a covered food market, the interior of the arch painted with what is reportedly Europe's largest artwork—a vast, slightly psychedelic still life of fruit, fish and flowers. It is gloriously ridiculous and the food underneath is good.

Day 1
Erasmusbrug, the Swan & the River

The Erasmusbrug—nicknamed de Zwaan, the Swan, for its single sweeping white pylon—crosses the Nieuwe Maas river and effectively divides the historic north bank from the redeveloped south. Walking it at sunset is the city's free signature experience. The skyline either side is a working harbour skyline, all cranes and container ships and tower blocks lit from within, with the bridge a clean white arc through the middle of it.

On the south bank, in the old harbour at Katendrecht, the SS Rotterdam sits permanently moored as a hotel and museum. We did the self-guided tour on a grey afternoon and found it genuinely worth the hour: an enormous 1950s ocean liner, the former flagship of the Holland America Line, preserved with its first-class dining rooms and engine telegraphs and the slightly melancholy grandeur of a thing built for a different age of travel.

Day 2
Witte de Withstraat & the Food-and-Drink Hour

Witte de Withstraat is the street the locals will steer you to within about ninety seconds of you asking where to eat. It runs through the cultural quarter just south of the city centre, lined with independent restaurants, bars, galleries and small late-night places, and it is the part of Rotterdam where the city's harbour-cool, art-school energy is at its highest concentration. We had a long, slow Indonesian rijsttafel at a place a friend's friend had recommended and finished the evening in a tiny bar two doors down whose name we never caught. This is the right way to use the street: book one thing, wander for the rest.

Around the corner, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is partly closed for a long refurbishment but its publicly accessible Depot—a mirrored, bowl-shaped building behind the main museum—is open and unusual: an art storage facility that you can walk through, seeing the museum's entire collection in its working racks rather than curated on walls. It is a strange and quietly thrilling experience. Check current opening details before you go.

Day 2
Day Trip: The Kinderdijk Windmills

If you only do one day trip from Rotterdam, do Kinderdijk. Nineteen 18th-century windmills, lined along the polder canals where the rivers Lek and Noord meet, designated UNESCO World Heritage and looking, on a still autumn morning, like the platonic ideal of every romantic Dutch landscape painting you have ever half-noticed. There's a waterbus from the centre of Rotterdam that takes about half an hour, drops you at the site, and gets you back in time for dinner. Two of the windmills are open as small museums; the rest are still occupied. Go on a weekday if you possibly can; the weekend coach tours pile in.

What we kept coming back to, on the train home, was how completely Rotterdam refuses to be a smaller or grittier version of Amsterdam. It is its own thing. If Amsterdam is the Netherlands looking lovingly back at the 17th century, Rotterdam is the same country looking with equal seriousness at the next one. You want, ideally, to do both. You especially want to do this one.