Rotterdam

The best introduction to the new Rotterdam is a single square. The Markthal, designed by MVRDV and opened in 2014, is a horseshoe of apartments arched over a covered food market, its ceiling covered by what is billed as the world's largest digital artwork. Across the street, Piet Blom's Cube Houses tilt on their stems; one of them, the Kijk-Kubus, is open as a show home so you can see how anyone lives in a cube. Then look down the Oudehaven, one of the oldest harbours in the Netherlands, to the Witte Huis of 1898, often called Europe's first skyscraper at 45 metres, which survived the bombing and still stands among its much taller neighbours. Each has its own audio guide, so you can hear how the city went from a 45-metre marvel to 150-metre towers in a century.

The Erasmusbrug, by Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos and finished in 1996, is the city's emblem: a single leaning pylon and a sweep of cables that earned it the nickname "the Swan". It was built to pull the old docklands of Kop van Zuid into the city, and it worked. At the tip of the Wilhelminapier stands Hotel New York, the 1901 headquarters of the Holland America Line, from which generations of emigrants sailed for the United States; today you can drink coffee where they bought their tickets. Behind it rises De Rotterdam, OMA's three stacked and shifted towers, 150 metres high and sixteen years in the making. The audio guides here follow the emigrants down to the quay and then up the towers that replaced the shipping offices.

A footbridge from the pier leads to Katendrecht, a former sailors' quarter and the city's old Chinatown, now a neighbourhood of breweries and food halls in converted warehouses. Moored on its southern shore is the SS Rotterdam, the Holland America Line's former flagship ocean liner, which has served as a hotel since 2010. Its story and the district's rough past are both told on the audio guide, which is a good companion while you wait for a table.

Rotterdam's museum quarter clusters around a single park. The Art Depot Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, another MVRDV building opened in 2020, is a bowl clad in mirrored glass that holds the museum's entire collection in open storage: you walk through the racks rather than past a selection. Next door, the Kunsthal Rotterdam is Rem Koolhaas's 1992 exhibition hall, a ramped box that changes its shows several times a year. The audio guides tell you why both buildings look the way they do before you go in. Afterwards, Witte de Withstraat is the street for a drink, lined with galleries, bars and the city's art institutes.

To see what the rest of Rotterdam used to look like, take the tram west to Historisch Delfshaven, a canal-side harbour that was once an independent town and escaped the bombing. Its gabled houses, windmill and distillery are the old-Dutch picture the centre lost; the Pilgrim Fathers Church here is where the Pilgrims held their last service before sailing for America in 1620. Further out, the Van Nelle Factory, by Brinkman and Van der Vlugt, is a glass-walled coffee, tea and tobacco plant from the 1920s that UNESCO listed as World Heritage in 2014, a reminder that Rotterdam was building modern before the war made it necessary. Both have audio guides that cover the ground the tram cannot.

For the overview, the Euromast has been the city's viewing tower since 1960; the open platform sits at 112 metres and a rotating glass lift carries you up to 185. From there the river, the bridge and the whole patchwork of post-war Rotterdam lay themselves out. Most visitors arrive at Rotterdam Centraal, the 2014 station with the angled steel roof, which is itself worth a minute of your audio guide before you set off. The centre is compact enough to walk, and trams, the metro and the water taxi reach everything else; play the guides as you ride.