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otterdam is the visual antithesis of Holland. A Gallic village of skyscrapers in the midst of Dutch bucolicism. In a country where the heart of cities always seems like a collection of dollhouses, Rotterdam stands proud and uninhibited, perched on its futuristic concrete and glass towers. Falling in love with it is not a matter of one night, but with enough time, its port soul, its good palate, and its creative and brave character leave an imprint difficult to forget.
Here, the impossible tends to be normal. Arriving by train in the city is like emerging through a gigantic white shark fin. On winter nights, its neighboring skyscraper lights up with twinkling LEDs painting a starry sky. Next to the old port, a neighborhood in the shape of a yellow forest sprouts where the treetops are cube-houses (Kubus Woning). There are towers like Lego pieces in balance (Dock21), skyscrapers that are heated with river water (Maastoren), and lollipops over 100 meters high (Euromast) where you can eat and sleep at heights and then descend to the ground by rappelling or zip-lining. There are also bridges like titanic harps that know how to open (Erasmusbrug) and even covered markets in the shape of an aerodynamic dolmen (Markethall) where you can buy under fruit frescoes while neighbors live among the building's walls. In 2025, a 174-meter round building (Dutch WindWheel) will emerge from the port water with a propeller in its center to be a restaurant, hotel, home, office, viewpoint, and, above all, an icon of the Rotterdam that never stops reinventing itself.
THE CITY THAT DREAMED DIFFERENTLY
On May 12, 1940, Rotterdam was amputated from its old identity. 15 minutes of bombs loaded with 97,000 kilos of explosives destroyed 24,000 homes and 600 years of cobblestone streets, gabled buildings, and windows over canals, turning the center into a sea of rubble where only the Gothic church of St. Laurent (Sint-Laurenskerk) stood like a beacon among the ruins.
It was the abrupt end of centuries of tradition and decades of modernity. Rotterdam was, between wars, the capital of espionage and jazz, of culture and nightlife. Thinkers, traitors, emigrants, businessmen, artists, and scoundrels inhabited its streets until the war stopped time. After liberation, the city made tabula rasa and emancipated itself from its own destiny. There was no sentimentality: Rotterdam decided to be different. The entire center was expropriated, leveled, and turned into a blank canvas: not even the street layout had to be respected. Freedom was total.
Rotterdam compensated for its identity loss with the development of a new personality: that of a "working city" (werk stad). And with the impetus of reconstruction pride, the city advanced through the decades like the great American metropolises: between the lights of architectural landmarks and the shadows of crime and drugs. But, starting in the second decade of the 2000s, Rotterdammers began to demand more from their city than just offices and shop windows: they wanted life, enjoyment. A new cultural and gastronomic scene began to consolidate. Today, in the city where the new is not feared and innovating seems to be the essence of belonging, the year is cinephile (IFFR, Architecture Film Festival, Wildlife Film Festival) and music lover (International Jazz Festival, REC Festival, North Sea Jazz festival); art often leaves museums and galleries to occupy the street, and good eating is practiced both among Michelin stars and in street market stalls.
ROTTERDAM AND NEW YORK, THE HISTORY THAT IS WITHOUT BEING SEEN
The connection between Rotterdam and New York is not a matter of physical appearance. An umbilical cord in the form of a maritime route pulsed between the two cities for over a century. In 1872, the Dutch shipping company Holland Amerika Lijn inaugurated a sea route that linked Rotterdam with New York until the mid-seventies of the last century. For years, millions of people departed from the docks of what is now the Kop Van Zuid neighborhood, fleeing a poor and turbulent Europe towards an uncertain future across the Atlantic.
Anonymous Titanics set sail every week with between 2,000 and 4,000 individual stories on board, loaded with poor people crammed into holds and rich people feasting in first class. Most passed through the old offices of the Holland Amerika Line, now reborn after years of abandonment and converted into the Hotel New York. Most waited their turn to board in large port ships that also perished under Nazi bombs, but were rebuilt and renamed Phoenix, like the bird. Today, these industrial spaces house restaurants while waiting to become, in a few years, a place for remembrance. Because in Rotterdam, history is incorporeal. But, like atoms, it is in the essence of everything even if it cannot be seen.