Rotterdam

Rotterdam began with a dam on the Rotte, a muddy fen stream, built in the 1260s where the Hoogstraat now runs. Count William IV of Holland granted it city rights on 7 July 1340, when it had only a few thousand people, and a canal to the north soon made it a trans-shipment centre between the Low Countries, England and Germany. Herring fishing was the mainstay until the Eighty Years' War, when its easy access to the sea brought new harbours, chambers of the East and West India Companies and, from the 1600s, a pioneering part in the Dutch slave trade.

The great growth came after 1872, when the Nieuwe Waterweg gave the port a new route to the sea. The city spread to the south bank, the Witte Huis rose in 1898 as the tallest office building in Europe of its day, and in the neutral Netherlands of the First World War Rotterdam became a centre of espionage. On 14 May 1940 German bombing destroyed almost all of the centre, killing about 900 people and leaving some 80,000 homeless; the Dutch army capitulated the next day. Of the city's Jews, 6,790 were deported in 1942–43 from the Loods 24 warehouse, most of them to be murdered.

Rather than restore the old city, Rotterdam rebuilt in modern form. The Lijnbaan of 1953 was the first car-free shopping street in Europe, a new Centraal station followed in 1957 and the Euromast in 1960. From the 1980s an active architectural policy filled the centre with towers, the Kop van Zuid rose on old docks in the 1990s, and the city was a European Capital of Culture in 2001 and host of the Eurovision Song Contest in 2021.

Rotterdam sees itself as a city of work, set against cultural Amsterdam and governmental The Hague, and the rivalry with the capital runs strongest between Feyenoord and Ajax supporters. Feyenoord, founded in 1908, became the first Dutch club to win the European Cup in 1970. The city calls itself a city of sport, with the marathon, an international tennis tournament and three professional football clubs.

Architecture is the city's calling card. Nicknamed Manhattan on the Maas, it holds the tallest buildings in the country and is home to leading firms such as Rem Koolhaas's OMA and MVRDV, while the Van Nelle Factory, the Cube Houses and the Markthal draw architecture lovers from abroad. Culture grew out of the port economy: the Rotterdam Philharmonic plays at De Doelen, the International Film Festival has run since 1972, the Kralingen Pop Festival of 1970 brought Pink Floyd and Santana to the Kralingse Bos, and in the 1990s the city became the home of gabber, a hardcore form of electronic dance music.

More than 180 nationalities live here, and the city has the largest Dutch Antillean community in the Netherlands, as well as large Surinamese, Cape Verdean, Turkish and Moroccan communities. Their presence shapes the Caribbean-inspired Summer Carnival, the markets of the south bank and the Essalam Mosque, the largest in the country. Local pride shows in the "Opzoomeren" movement, in which residents of thousands of streets plant façade gardens and look after their own blocks.

The city had about 655,000 inhabitants in 2022, and the Rotterdam–The Hague metropolitan area around it about 2.7 million, the most populous in the country. More than half of the city's residents have at least one parent born abroad. The population peaked in 1965, fell sharply as families left for the suburbs, and has grown more slowly since than in the other big Dutch cities. Young single people, graduates and foreign-born residents cluster in the centre.

The port remains the economic engine — Europe's largest, centred on petrochemical industries and general cargo — alongside the Dutch headquarters of shipping, energy, trading and insurance firms, Erasmus University and the Erasmus Medical Center, one of Europe's leading hospitals. The city also attracts many people looking for work, and unemployment is markedly higher than the national average.

Much of the city lies below sea level behind dykes, and climate adaptation is part of daily life: the city subsidises green roofs, has built the Dakpark, a park raised about nine metres above the street in Bospolder-Tussendijken, and Europe's largest rooftop farm sits on the Schieblok in the centre. Commuting is by metro, tram, bike and train, with Rotterdam–The Hague journeys an everyday routine.

Rotterdam's most famous contribution to Dutch food is the kapsalon, created in the city in 2003: a metal takeaway tray of chips topped with döner meat and slices of Gouda, heated until the cheese melts and finished with shredded lettuce. Beyond that, the city eats like the port it is, drawing on the dishes of the many communities who have settled here.

The markets show that mix best. The Binnenrotte market in the centre and the Afrikaanderplein market on the south bank are two of the city's fourteen weekly markets, the latter with stalls geared to Antillean, South American and African shoppers. The Markthal, opened in 2014 beside the Binnenrotte, began as a fresh market and has become a hall of food stalls and eateries. Chinatown on the West-Kruiskade has Chinese, Indonesian and other Asian restaurants.

For eating out, the centre around the Lijnbaan, the Markthal and the Oude Haven is the busiest area, the Witte de Withstraat mixes bars and world kitchens with galleries, the Scheepvaartkwartier has classic waterside restaurants, and Katendrecht and Delfshaven have turned old harbour quarters into places to eat. Schiedam, on the western edge of the city, has been a centre of jenever distilling since its 18th-century heyday.