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It's one of those drizzly Dutch mornings in Rotterdam—the kind that, having lived here for a good bit of my adult life, I know well. Too cool for shorts, too warm for a winter jacket. I'm standing on tiptoe behind a block of grimy warehouses, staring straight into the eye of a giant skull. Chalky white, with a square jaw and a shallow nasal cavity, it juts straight up from the ground. But unlike most craniums, this one has a sauna that releases steam from its eye sockets—and in its neck, there's a bath. Made from fiberglass and wood, and about the size of a Suburban, the skull is part of the artist-designer Joep van Lieshout's sculpture park, located in the Merwe-Vierhavens district on the western fringe of the city.
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Eccentric though it may be, the presence of Van Lieshout's work here represents an impressive about-face for an area that still bears the pockmarks of a decrepit industry. Once home to one of the world's largest fruit ports, Merwe-Vierhavens, or M4H, as the locals call it, hit a downturn in the '90s, when the rise of refrigerated shipping containers made its cold-storage units redundant. It was relegated to a peripheral wasteland, checkered with port cranes and windy parking lots.
In the late 20th century, much of Rotterdam felt like M4H. Perhaps not in appearance, but certainly in the national psyche. While Amsterdam, Utrecht, and The Hague were bastions of the arts and cultural wealth, Rotterdam was seen as a no-frills workers' city. “Up until 10 years ago, you could hardly score a proper bagel here,” Van Lieshout tells me. “Coffee was served strong and black.”
Today, Rotterdam has not only caught up to its Dutch siblings but it has also become a leader in its own right—a pioneer of thoughtful urban regeneration. It's possible to trace the beginning of this evolution to 2007, when Rotterdam joined C40 Cities, a network of 96 metropolises worldwide that are confronting climate change with ambitious, target-based actions that range from constructing net-zero carbon buildings to increasing the number of a city's “green” streets. (The latter, for example, might be achieved through a combination of pedestrian-friendly planning policies and the purchase of zero-emission buses.) Rotterdam has since reinforced its commitment to environmental action, signing its own Climate Agreement in 2019 to halve CO2 and greenhouse-gas emissions by 2029. To reach that goal, the city embarked on an innovation tear, investing in green spaces, incentivizing smart design, and—as in the case of M4H—extracting value from neglect.
The sculpture park in M4H is just one piece of Van Lieshout's ambitious plans for a cultural playground. There's also Brutus, a whole neighborhood created with artists in mind. He shows me a scale model of three austere residential towers, to be perched on top of and alongside his current workshop. There will be affordable studios and an outdoor space outfitted with a theater and open-air cinema. Already, Van Lieshout says, the project is attracting outside interest, and his studio is developing related plans for other cities that he can't yet name.
Once completed—by 2025, he hopes—it'll be at the heart of the Makers District, a collective name for the 3D printers, furniture designers, and other creators who have settled here. Established in 2015 as the Rotterdam Innovation District, the area also encompasses the former shipyard RDM, another newly revitalized industrial zone, where flourishing businesses pursue sustainable solutions in energy, construction, and other fields.
Van Lieshout shows me around on a bicycle tour past apartment-block-size ships unloading brightly colored crates of mangoes and papayas. We stop at the Floating Farm, supposedly the world's first, where 40 cows chomp on grass in a high-tech barn perched atop the water—a space-saving solution in an area where agricultural land is sparse. Their feed—clipped from nearby soccer fields—is supplemented with spent grain from the Stadshaven Brouwerij, a craft brewery that recently opened nearby in a century-old fruit warehouse. Tucked behind a garage block, Weelde is an urban farm and hangout that looks like a permanent festival. Everywhere, Van Lieshout points out plots and buildings that'll soon become ateliers, apartments, or coworking hubs. “Five years from now, you won't recognize it anymore,” he says, nodding at the skyline.
But Rotterdammers have seen change before. Ever since World War II, when much of the city was turned to dust, it has been reinventing itself. Crossing the Maas River, I reach the Wilhelminakade district, where during the 20th century European workers boarded Holland America Line steamboats for greener pastures in the U.S. The rise of affordable air travel made these ships obsolete, and after the last one left for New York, in 1971, the area fell into disrepair. (The port is currently transforming to provide shore power for the cruise ships that now dock here.) Up until the early 2000s, few would think of visiting, let alone settling down here, but today it's one of the city's most expensive residential areas, with high-rises designed by Norman Foster, Álvaro Siza, and Rotterdam's very own Rem Koolhaas. It's also the mooring spot for a fully self-sufficient office made entirely out of timber. Launched late last year, it's the largest floating workspace in the world; and when sea levels rise, it won't flood but simply rise with them.
No forlorn lot has been spared from the city's unbridled drive for innovation. A glass-domed riverside water park I used to visit is now called BlueCity—a breeding ground for sustainable start-ups where young entrepreneurs brew beer from rainwater and turn fruit peels into vegan leather. They hold Zoom calls under the old waterslide, while a farm growing mushrooms from coffee grounds just moved out of the former dressing rooms. A few blocks away, I stop at Het Industriegebouw, a postwar industrial complex that's now mostly home to PR agencies and architecture studios. Cees van der Veeken, the founding partner at landscape architecture studio LOLA, gives me a primer on seven soon-to-be-developed parks to increase the city's livability and climate resilience. “For the first 15 years of running this office, all we did was feasibility studies,” he says. “Now, finally, projects are actually happening.”
The next morning, I find myself in a downtown garden teeming with pumpkin vines and blackberry bushes. Chickens peck at food scraps near my feet as bees buzz in a wooden hive nearby. I could almost be in Holland's bucolic heartland, where I grew up, if it weren't for the traffic roaring seven stories below. Esther Wienese, Rotterdam's self-proclaimed “rooftop diva” and guide of rooftop walks, had brought me to this urban farm on top of the Schieblock building. Working with tour outfit Inside Rotterdam, Wienese wants to show me that the city isn't only making headway at the ground level.
Rotterdam's slapdash postwar reconstruction resulted in 200 million square feet of flat rooftops. They can't handle the increasingly heavy downpours, and in the summer months form heat islands. Green roofs are a solution: They absorb water and heat while increasing the city's biodiversity. But there's more to it than that, Wienese tells me. She rattles off other benefits, including improved mental well-being and reduced air pollution. Green roofs behave as urban social spaces too—an important consideration, given a recent U.N. report projecting that, within a decade, two out of every three humans will live in cities. In the M4H district, Wienese shows me sketches of a “village” of prefab houses to be installed atop a former electronics factory.
We follow the Luchtsingel, a yellow pathway that connects the Schieblock building to the cornice of the former Hofplein train station nearby. I watch as Gen Z'ers and retirees tend to shrubbery and apple trees in the rooftop orchard. Wienese tells me there's a months-long waiting list for their volunteer positions. Protruding from the orchard is a viaduct that's more than a mile long. Still covered in asphalt, it'll soon become a High Line–like park with rainwater storage and shelter for city-dwelling fauna.
At every turn, I'm reminded of Rotterdam's ethos of “niet lullen maar poetsen.” Roughly translated, it means “Don't blab on, just clean”—a characteristically no-nonsense way of saying that actions speak louder than words. As forward-thinking as it is straightforward, this city isn't just a place to call home, but a mindset to live by.
Where to stay
Set in a former newspaper office east of the city center, The Slaak Rotterdam still wears its press credentials with pride. In the lobby, a vintage Adler typewriter shares a corner with black-and-white photographs of bowler-hatted reporters, and the rooms house writing desks for 21st-century hacks.
Hotel Âme owner Angel Kwok furnished the 14 rooms of this 19th-century fixer-upper in a Japandi palette of muted grays, earth-toned fabrics, and tactile ceramic bowls from her own atelier, an appropriately Zen respite from the hubbub of nearby Eendrachtsplein Square.
There's a home-away-from-home quality to the Supernova Hotel. Spacious rooms have cozy seating nooks with midcentury furniture and record players, plus pink-tiled bathrooms with cabinets from recycled plastic terrazzo.
Where to eat
At Héroine Restaurant & Bar, on the ground floor of Het Industriegebouw, chef Michael Schook serves tasting menus in a ‘70s-inspired space with Eames wire chairs and melting disco balls by Rotganzen. The vegetable-forward menus could include everything from grilled apricot with Thai basil to guinea fowl with yellow beetroot.
No spot encapsulates the up-and-coming Noord area better than Mecca, a corner café serving croissants and chocolate-tahini babkas alongside flat whites and Kashmiri chai. The lunch menu is heavy on Middle Eastern flavors and preparations—falafel pitas, hummus dips, fattoush salads—to appeal to both the young urbanites and the immigrant communities who call the neighborhood home.
Housed in a former brothel in the M4H area, Bitter specializes in “confusion cuisine,” which translates into playful set menus with scallops made from celeriac and beetroot tarts with tomato and olive caramel. After dinner, the space turns into a lounge for the electro nightclub BIT.
Rotterdam is packed with taprooms and indie breweries, but Kaapse Maria, the second outpost of local craft brewery Kaapse Brouwers, remains one of the best, with 24 IPAs, stouts, and pilsners on tap. They have an excellent natural-wine list, too, if you're craft-beered out.
All listings featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. If you book something through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. This article appeared in the September/October 2022 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
