Rotterdam

The inner ceiling of this horseshoe block carries a painting of fruit and fish across eleven thousand square metres. Both flanks of the arch are flats, and their windows look down into the hall.

Thirty eight cubes tilted at forty five degrees sit on posts and run together like a bridge. You can go inside one and find out how living against a leaning wall actually works.

One pylon of this cable stayed span bends up to 139m, which earned it the nickname of the swan. From the south end the bridge and the towers stack into one view.

This old harbour escaped the bombing, so its seventeenth century warehouses and timber bridge survive. The church the Pilgrims left from still stands beside the quay.

A tower of 185m whose glass lift turns slowly as it climbs. The windows are split so the lower half faces the port and the upper half the city.

A museum store opened up for anyone to enter, wrapped in mirror panels that hand the sky back. Nothing is arranged as a show, so the works sit on their storage racks.

A single ramp threads four halls together so you never feel you are changing floors. There is no standing collection, so the contents differ completely on each visit.

A seventy five minute run by boat around the largest port in Europe. Container cranes swing loads over the ships close enough to follow with your eyes.

A vertical lift railway bridge from 1927 that carries no trains now. The deck used to rise as one piece, and both towers were left standing.

The shed where ships left Europe for the Americas has been rebuilt as an exhibition space. A spiral stair climbs past the roof and circles once above the water.

One of the few city centre buildings that came through the 1940 bombing. Everything around it was rebuilt after the war, so this stone hall looks like it belongs to another era. A war memorial stands in the square out front.

The only large building left from the medieval centre; the 1940 bombing reduced it to walls and tower, and it was restored after the war. Several big pipe organs stand inside. Glass towers surround it, which makes the Gothic spire stand out all the more.

A white-tiled office block from 1898, once counted among the tallest in Europe. It stayed standing through the bombing. It sits on the Old Harbour waterfront, and the Cube Houses share the photo with it.

Rebuilt in 2014, the station thrusts a roof like a blade's tip out over the square. Behind it the platforms sit under a glass canopy covered in solar panels. Thousands of bikes park in an underground lot in front.

The former head office of the Holland America Line, whose ships sailed for the Americas. A hotel and restaurant fill it now, and clocks sit in its twin towers. A water taxi from the city side lands at the jetty right outside.

A transatlantic liner that first sailed in 1959, now tied up for good at Katendrecht. Since 2010 it has opened as a hotel and museum, with 1950s lounges and the engine room to tour. Few big liners from that era survive.

A wooded lake out in eastern Kralingen, ringed by a path for walkers and cyclists. Two windmills, De Ster and De Lelie, stand by the shore. In summer people swim off the sandy banks and sail small dinghies.

Founded in the centre in 1857, it relocated to Blijdorp in December 1940. The Oceanium sea aquarium, added in 2001, nearly doubled its size. The whole zoo is listed as a national monument.

A museum of ships and the port, fitting for a harbour city. The Leuvehaven basin in front is its open-air wing, with old vessels and cranes left afloat. Strolling the quayside needs no ticket.

This glass and steel works once processed coffee, tea and tobacco, and joined the World Heritage roll in 2014. It is held up as a model of the International Style. Offices and events use it now, so on normal days visitors see it from the Schie canal side.

Small speedboats linking some 50 jetties around Rotterdam and Schiedam. Call by phone or app and one comes to the nearest landing. It is quicker than detouring via the bridges, and the Erasmus Bridge looks its best from down on the river.

A storm surge barrier finished in 1997, whose two 237 m steel arms swing shut across the waterway. It first closed in 2007 and again in December 2023. The Keringhuis visitor centre beside it explains Dutch water management.

Home ground of Feyenoord, holding roughly 50,000. True to its name, the tub, the stands wrap the pitch like a bowl. On non-match days tours take in the players' tunnel and dressing rooms.

A harbour peninsula once known for sailors' bars and an early Chinatown. Restaurants and a theatre now ring the Deliplein square. Reach it on foot from where the Erasmus Bridge lands on the south bank, or by foot ferry from the centre.

A city just west of Rotterdam whose canal-side windmills are the tallest traditional mills in the world. So many distilleries ran here in the 1700s and 1800s that it was nicknamed Black Nazareth. The national jenever museum occupies an old works.

The city's oldest harbour, where old wooden boats and barges stay moored year round. Cafe terraces stretch along the quay. It lies right beneath the Cube Houses, so people stroll the two together.

A shopping street opened in 1953, counted among Europe's first pedestrian-only precincts. Its low blocks were built as the bombed-out centre was rebuilt. It is still the heart of the shopping district and busy even on weekdays.