Rotterdam Architecture,1

So we took trusty bus #36 to Schiedam and then, with the help of a kind university student who had just spent a year in the US, bought metro/bus/tram cards, and metro'd on into the old city. Apart from visiting the market, the grote kerk, and the maritime museum, we mostly walked around, looking at the buildings and monuments. It's a very young and lively sort of place.

We emerged from the underground onto a giant square,
surrounded by the Pencil, the Cube Houses, the city library.
the grand market, the cathedral, etc.; above is my attempt to
capture half of this in a panorama shot

The Pencil and some of the Cube houses

More of the Cubes

The Market...a bit reminiscent of the Grand Arch in Paris, less
the right angles

Pompidou-esque public library

Grote Kerk, restored

Metro station

Better view of The Pencil

More of the Cubes; people actually live in these
things

Beginning to look around at some of the bigger
buildings

Walking past the the Willemsbrug, the Williams Bridge, over
the Maas (Meuse)

Interesting, large, bridge and river sculpture

The buildings are almost always eye-catching

Looking downstream toward the Erasmus bridge

Rotterdam, May 14, 1940

Rotterdam is one of Europe's great cities. Until quite recently, it was the world's largest port. When the Dutch resisted Hitler's advances in May, 1940--his armies already were in Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and France, but he needed airfields with proximity to the UK--he ordered his Luftwaffe to destroy Rotterdam, as an example. The old city was indeed destroyed...fewer than a dozen great buildings remained. And the bombing occurred during a cease-fire and negotiations. The city had been evacuated, and only a thousand people were killed. But historic Rotterdam, the medieval center, was gone after the bombing and days of uncontrollable fire. Utrecht would be next, the Germans said, and the Dutch did finally capitulate. On May 15, the day after the bombing of Rotterdam, the Brits changed the previously military-targets-only policy of the RAF.

After the war, Rotterdam was faced with the decision of how to rebuild. Much of Europe chose, literally, to rebuild. But Rotterdam chose to build a new city and a new Europe. The resulting architectural adventures are something one has to see.

Old city and inner port, May, 1940

One of many memorials in the town

Another before photo

One of the very few structures in central
Rotterdam to have survived the bombing

Another memorial

The official memorial, on the old harbor

Thus

After the blitz...

Photo of the Rotterdam cathedral/grote kerk after the bombing

Reminders of what was

Mauritshuis, 2

Continuing our visit to The Hague's Mauritshuis...

Johannes Moreelse, Democritus, The Laughing Philosopher, 1630; hmmm...
maybe I should look him up in Wikipedia

A great van Ruisdale...View of Harlem, with Bleaching Grounds, 1670

Gimme a Big Head, Rene Sance, 1713

At this point I was getting undisciplined again, failing to shoot the labels...but this is
a version of Jan Steen's great "As the old do, the young copy" (my lousy paraphrase)...
in which the old indeed are misbehaving, and in which the young follow...

Mitigated somewhat by the fact that the father, here teaching his son to smoke, is
Steen himself; is there a Steen museum?

A more serious Steen, The Life of Man, 1665

Hals' Laughing Boy, 1625

Hals' portraits of Jacob Olycan and of Aletta Hannemans; a
wedding portrait, I think...separately, just in case

One of the really great Steens, Girl Eating Oysters, 1658;
oysters are an aphrodisiac, you understand

Carel Fabritius' The Goldfinch, 1654; another book come out
of the Mauritshuis

Vermeer before he was Vermeer...Diana and Her Nymphs, 1654

And now we are in the unimaginably priceless department... Vermeer's View of 
Delft, 1660, said by some to be the finest of Dutch landscapes...

And, The Girl...unlike in San Francisco, you could stand 
right next to her and marvel...not  my favorite painting, not 
even my favorite Vermeer, but pretty incredible in any case

Mauritshuis, 1

The Mauritshuis has been closed the last several years for renovations, and many of its holdings either shared via neighbor museums or sent on a world-wide tour. We visited the tour when it came to San Francisco in 2013 and admired its assorted Hals, Steens, and Vermeer (http://roadeveron.blogspot.be/2013/02/de-girl-with-de-pearl-at-de-young.html). So naturally we wanted to see the larger Mauritshuis now that it is all put back together.

The Mauritshuis, in the government center

It is of course the home of the girl with the pearl...we'll get to her later

A Garden of Eden done jointly by Rubens and Peter Breughel the Younger

Francois Brunel's disturbing Confiscation of the Contents of a Painter's Studio,
1590

Rogier van der Weyden's Lamentation, mid-15th century

Hendrik Avercamp, Ice Scene, 1610

Up closer for Breughelesque humor

Clara Peeters, Still Life with Pretzel, 1615; I swear I am not
making this up

One of Rembrandt's first big hits, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicholaes Tulp;
done when R was only 25

Rembrandt's Homer, 1663

Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, 1669; probably his last

And on a lighter note, one of the Mauritshuis' most popular pieces, so the guide
said, Paulus Potter's The Bull, 1647; life-sized, too

Detail; certainly the largest cow pattie in 17th century art; certainly exceeded
somewhere in the 20th century, whose excesses knew few limits