One of Europe’s most underrated cities is shining in 2025

Every city has its forgotten corners, those grubby, seedy spots you instinctively avoid. For the seven years I lived in Rotterdam, this back alley was the Steigersgracht waterway. Once part of an intricate network of canals in the city centre, it had become a dumping ground where the water stank and the canal was filled with muck.

Hanging 10 in Rotterdam’s RiF 010 surf park.

So 10 years later, when I find myself floating in the middle of the same canal, I’m slightly apprehensive about putting my head under. I’m next in line to catch a wave at the world’s first inner-city surf park, RiF 010, and with a few hundred locals on their lunch break watching the first week of operations, the pressure is on.

Surrounded by skyscrapers, I paddle hard as a perfect 1.6-metre left-hander curls toward me. It crests, I paddle into position, spring up… and immediately wipe out. Thankfully, the water is cold and clean, and I surface to cheers and chortles from the crowd, absolutely stoked and ready to go again.

Build it and they will come… the quay in front of Fenix 1.Credit: Iris van den Broek

Rotterdam isn’t top of the average Australian traveller’s shopping list when planning a trip to Europe. Once considered as beautiful as its rival Amsterdam, the centre of the city was almost wiped out at the beginning of World War II. With Rotterdam devastated, the Netherlands surrendered rather than have their other cities destroyed. And while history moved on, Rotterdam struggled to recover as decades passed, a working class port city in decline.

Yet having a blank architectural canvas had a curious impact on Rotterdam: the city became a beacon for architectural experimentation and an incubator for new ideas, just like the surf park. “I couldn’t build this anywhere else but Rotterdam,” says RiF 010’s founder Edwin van Viegen.

“Rif” means reef in Dutch, while the 010 refers to the city’s area code. The entrepreneur received a €3 million grant to assist with the project, one of the conditions being the clean-up of the canal. The water, sourced from a nearby river, is cleaned using filtration and circulation. An aqua-robotic rubbish collector patrols the perimeter of the waterway and a floating bar and terrace sit next to the pool, which includes a spectator “splash zone”.

“If I’d wanted to build it in a field somewhere, it wouldn’t have taken me 12 years,” says van Viegen, a keen surfer who faced significant legal challenges to get the project off the ground.

“Instead, I wanted to do something that benefited the city.”

The city of Rotterdam and its citizens take pride in that “something”, and the focus of many a new development is how it can improve the quality of life for locals, rather than being built for tourists.

Hotel nHow Rotterdam.Credit: Iris van den Broek

This theme continues with the Hofbogen, the repurposing of a defunct above-ground train viaduct from the city centre to the north inspired by New York City’s High Line. Progress has been slow but steady.

The arched workshops underneath have been filled with businesses, from salons to bespoke furniture makers, artisans and coffee roasters. In 2024, a new food hall opened in the old train station at the halfway point, Station Bergweg, with patrons taking a beer, a bowl of ramen or a box of chocolates from a vending machine to eat on the station terrace, with views overlooking the city.

The revitalisation of the next stage of the Hofbogen involves starting construction from the fringe of the city and finishing in the CBD, so the locals get the initial benefit.

Of course, tourists aren’t neglected: in the coming year, there will be a flourish of new hotels and museums. One of the few historic buildings in the city centre to escape destruction in World War II was the old post office. In 2026, the building will open as the new five-star 224-room Kimpton Hotel.

The Nederlands Fotomuseum, reopens later this year in the old Santos coffee factory, a heritage-listed building on the Rijnhaven harbour. A short walk away is Fenix, a new art museum that focuses on migration through contemporary art and documentary photography. It’s striking silver centrepiece, the Tornado, is both a work of art and a viewing platform that rises from the centre of the historic warehouse building that houses the museum. A major exhibit at Fenix is The Suitcase Labyrinth, a ground-floor installation of more than 2000 suitcases. Visitors navigate the installation while listening to stories of the suitcase owners’ journeys.

The museum interviewed thousands of migrants and collected the suitcases belonging to the storytellers to physically complement their stories. Each suitcase forms part of a labyrinth designed to allow visitors complete immersion in the challenges faced by migrants.

The location of the museum is particularly poignant. On the south bank of the Nieuwe Maas river system, it was once home to the world’s largest warehouse, but was also the place where more than 3 million emigrants (including Albert Einstein) departed Europe with the Holland America Line, bound for the New World.

Before it became the museum site, the unrenovated warehouse was used as the Fenix Food Hall. The hipster hangout now sits next to the museum, underneath the new Fenix 1 housing development, the first of a series of apartment blocks revitalising the area.

The Rijnhaven, like the Steigergracht, was derelict and decayed for years – a crumbling port area in a rough neighbourhood most people avoided. Slowly the area has gentrified.

Floating Office at the Rijnhaven.Credit: Iris van den Broek

The addition of a small pedestrian bridge in 2012 created easier access for bike and foot traffic between the Katendrecht neighbourhood and the city. New apartment blocks and hotels including the NHow were built on the Wilhelmina Pier in 2014; the same year, a food hall opened in a warehouse previously abandoned for 40 years.

In 2021, the energy-positive, C02-negative, three-storey Floating Office opened and now houses the Global Centre on Adaptation.

The unique Wikkelboat accommodation.

Then there are city’s quirkiest accommodation option, the Wikkelboat, six houseboats moored on a pontoon walkway from the Rijnhaven’s floating park

Each is made of 24 layers of wrapped, corrugated cardboard. The dwellings feature modular design, solar power and, I discover after three minutes of huffing and puffing, a retractable deck that reveals a sunken jacuzzi.

The Wikkelboat is a brilliant self-contained option to experience the city, with two bikes on the
side ready to go, Murphy beds to optimise space and an outdoor shower to complement the indoor bathroom.

Inside a Wikkelboat.

Settled in the jacuzzi, I look across to where a new beach and park is being constructed and where a series of skyscrapers have been approved.

So far, more than a third of the harbour basin – exceeding eight hectares – has been drained and reclaimed for the 350,000-square-metre urban development, which will bring more than 2000 new homes and office blocks, floating parks and an educational tidal park.

Wikkelboat… fun for sun-lovers.

But with temperatures today hitting more than 30 degrees, the city is preoccupied with Rotterdam’s newest swimming spot, near Rijnhaven’s first floating park and just 100 metres from the Wikkelboat.

Clean-water testing and record-busting summer temperatures mean every spare spot of grass and concrete on the floating park is taken up with bodies, beach towels and colourful inflatables.

Ten years ago, this harbour was so dirty I wouldn’t dare put a toe in. However, I can’t help myself.
I haul out of the warm water in the jacuzzi, and dive off the side of the Wikkelboat, attracting the attention of a mother duck and eight ducklings. It is cold, and thankfully, clean.

Rotterdam isn’t Europe’s most beautiful city. It’s not a top-tier European destination like Paris or Rome, Barcelona or London. But it’s a place that embraces the future, and shows innovative European living at its finest. Want to see the real Europe? Rotterdam is ready.

THE DETAILS

FLY
Singapore Airlines operates daily flights to Amsterdam via Singapore from most Australian capital cities.

See www.singaporeair.com

STAY
Self-contained Wikkelboats are in the Red Marina and Rijnhaven in Rotterdam, and can sleep six to eight people with prices from €189 ($323). See wikkelboat.nl

PLAY
RiF 010 has surf sessions from €45 ($77). See rif010.nl

MORE
rotterdam.info

The writer travelled as a guest of Wikkelboat and RiF010.