Rotterdam, The Hague & South Holland

Romans held the Rhine frontier here, and the fort at Matilo near Leiden stood on it. In the Middle Ages the counts of Holland built their hall on the Binnenhof in The Hague, a hunting lodge that became a seat of government, while Dordrecht, at the meeting of great rivers, received town rights in 1220 and is usually called the oldest city in Holland. Delft, Leiden and Gouda grew rich on cloth, beer and trade, and peat-digging and drainage shaped the polders between them.

The Dutch Revolt was fought across the province. Leiden survived a Spanish siege in 1574 when the dykes were cut and the rebel fleet sailed over the flooded land to relieve it; William of Orange rewarded the city with a university in 1575. He made Delft his headquarters and was assassinated there in 1584. In the Golden Age Delft's potters, Leiden's cloth industry and painters such as Rembrandt, born in Leiden, and Vermeer, born in Delft, flourished, and in 1620 the Pilgrims left from Delfshaven on the first stage of their voyage to America.

Rotterdam grew into a great port in the 19th century after the New Waterway opened its route to the sea. On 14 May 1940 German bombing destroyed its old centre, and the Dutch surrendered that same afternoon. The city chose to rebuild in modern form rather than restore, and the port expanded into the sea at the Maasvlakte. After the 1953 flood the storm barriers of the Delta Works reached into the province, completed by the Maeslantkering near Hook of Holland in 1997.

The province contains two cities that define themselves against each other and against Amsterdam. Rotterdam prides itself on working rather than talking — a blunt, hands-on port-city character — and on Feyenoord, its football club. The Hague is the city of government, diplomats and international courts, more formal and leafy, with a distinctive local accent and a large community with roots in the former Dutch East Indies. Rotterdam is one of the most diverse cities in the country, with large Surinamese, Cape Verdean, Turkish and Moroccan communities.

The older towns hold on to their own customs. Leiden's 3 October festival marks the lifting of the 1574 siege with free herring and white bread and a dish of hutspot, a mash of potato, carrot and onion said to have been found in the Spanish camp. Delft still makes hand-painted blue-and-white pottery at Royal Delft, the last of its 17th-century factories, and the royal family is buried in the vault of Delft's Nieuwe Kerk. Each May or June the first catch of new herring is celebrated at Scheveningen with Flag Day.

Parts of the rural east of the province, around the rivers and the Alblasserwaard, belong to the Dutch Bible Belt, where strict Reformed churches keep Sunday as a day of rest. The bulb growers of the dune belt, the greenhouse growers of the Westland and the students of Leiden and Delft add their own distinct worlds.

South Holland has about 3.8 million people, the most of any province. Rotterdam has around 670,000 and The Hague, the provincial capital, around 560,000; Leiden, Zoetermeer and Dordrecht each have over 100,000, as does Delft with its large student population, and Gouda about 75,000.

The port of Rotterdam, the largest in Europe, is the economic engine, with refineries, chemical plants and container terminals stretching some 40 kilometres to the sea. The Hague lives on government, the civil service, international organisations and law, including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Delft and Leiden are knowledge cities built around their universities and research institutes, and the Westland, between The Hague and Rotterdam, is a landscape of greenhouses growing tomatoes, peppers and flowers for export.

Days are commuter days, with fast trains and cycle paths tying the cities together. Rotterdam's centre has been rebuilt again in recent decades with towers along the Maas, and its working-class districts in the south are changing through regeneration. The housing shortage, pressure on green space, drug trafficking through the port and the energy transition of its petrochemical industry are the issues of the day.

South Holland is cheese and herring country. Gouda, the cheese, is made on farms across the Green Heart and sold young, mature or old, and Leidse kaas is a semi-hard cheese flavoured with cumin and caraway seeds. Gouda also claims the stroopwafel, two thin waffles glued together with syrup, made in the town since the 19th century. Herring is at its most celebrated in Scheveningen, where the new season's Hollandse Nieuwe arrives each June, and the coastal towns sell kibbeling and fried fish from harbour stalls.

The Hague's long ties with Indonesia show in its food: toko shops and restaurants serve rijsttafel, nasi goreng, saté and spekkoek, the many-layered spice cake. The Hague is also the home of Haagse hopjes, hard coffee-flavoured sweets. Rotterdam invented the kapsalon, a fast-food tray of chips topped with döner meat, melted cheese and salad, and its markets and restaurants reflect a city of many origins.

Hutspot is Leiden's dish in October, and the greenhouse tomatoes and peppers of the Westland are eaten across Europe. Schiedam, beside Rotterdam, was the centre of jenever distilling, with its old malt-wine distilleries and some of the tallest traditional windmills in the world.

Rotterdam is the place for modern architecture: the Erasmus Bridge over the Maas, the tilted Cube Houses, the arched Markthal, the Euromast, the Kunsthal and the mirrored Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, with the old harbour of Delfshaven, which survived the bombing, as a contrast. Harbour tours show the scale of the port. The Hague offers the Binnenhof and its Ridderzaal, the Mauritshuis with Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, the Peace Palace, the Escher museum, the miniature city of Madurodam and the beach and pier at Scheveningen.

Delft's canals lead to the Markt between the Nieuwe Kerk and the town hall, with the Oude Kerk, the Prinsenhof museum and the Royal Delft workshops nearby. Leiden has the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden for antiquities, Naturalis, the university's Hortus botanicus, where some of the first tulips in the Netherlands were grown, and the De Valk windmill. Gouda's Gothic town hall stands alone in the market square beside the weigh house and cheese market, and the Sint-Janskerk is famous for its 16th-century stained glass.

In spring the bulb fields north of Leiden bloom around Keukenhof at Lisse, and the dunes and beaches of Noordwijk and Katwijk lie close by. To the east, the nineteen windmills of Kinderdijk stand along the polder canals where the Lek meets the Noord, reached by water bus from Rotterdam, and Dordrecht's old harbours and great church sit on the edge of the Biesbosch wetlands.