Walking Tour — The Inner City

In a two hour walking tour UrbanGuides will take you on an exploring journey of the inner city of Rotterdam. Together with an architecture guide you’ll discover the area from the Old Harbor up till City Hall.

Rotterdam is, in every way, a curious metropole; in contrast to other cities, most of the center is younger and more modern than the areas surrounding it. The heart of the city therefore feels like a playground full of possibilities for urban planners and landscape architects. The center not only forms a patchwork of prewar buildings, postwar constructions and contemporary architecture, it also seems as if there has been a lot of experimenting going on over the years.

In a two hour walking tour UrbanGuides will take you on an exploring journey of the inner city of Rotterdam. Together with an architecture guide you’ll discover the area from the Old Harbor up till City Hall. Together you explore how the medieval town, once cramped with shabby working-class houses, developed itself – both before and after the blitz – into a pleasant and sumptuous city center.

Along the way you’ll get to know everything about the transformation of the Old Harbor and the construction of the remarkable Cube Houses. There will be a focus on the unmissable eyecatcher by MVRDV, in which you’ll discover how this Market Hall became the heart of the new inner city. Via the historical church of Saint Laurence, you’ll walk on to the Timmerhuis by OMA, the example of renovation architecture, in which old and new melt together into a fantastic blend. Our enthusiastic guide finishes the tour with the metamorphosis of what is probably Rotterdam’s most famous street: the Coolsingel.