Rotterdam

MVRDV's horseshoe of 228 flats arched over an open market floor, opened in October 2014. The 11,000 square metre ceiling, Hoorn des Overvloeds by Arno Coenen and Iris Roskam, is the largest artwork in the country. Open 10am to 8pm most days, noon to 6pm on Sunday.

Piet Blom's tilted cubes on stilts over the Overblaak, thirty-eight of them plus two super-cubes, finished in 1984. One is open as the Kijk-Kubus show cube, daily 10am to 6pm, EUR 3.50, three floors of steep stairs and slanted walls.

The first publicly accessible art store in the world: over 155,000 works in fourteen climate-controlled compartments inside a mirrored bowl in the Museumpark. Tuesday to Sunday 11am to 5pm, EUR 20 including the roof garden.

Seventy-five minutes out among the container terminals and dry docks, leaving from the foot of the Erasmusbrug, EUR 18.75 for adults and sailing all year. The port runs forty kilometres to the sea; this is the only way to feel that.

A museum about migration in a rebuilt dockside warehouse on Katendrecht, with a steel Tornado staircase spiralling up and out through the roof. Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm. Arrive by water taxi.

The 2014 station by Benthem Crouwel, MVSA and West 8 handles over a hundred thousand train passengers a day and leaves you a ten-minute walk from the Markthal. Eurostar to Brussels, Paris and London calls here as well.

Intercity Direct is the quickest run north, but it goes via Amsterdam Zuid and Schiphol rather than Amsterdam Centraal, and the high-speed section between Schiphol and Rotterdam carries a supplement, EUR 1.92 off-peak and EUR 3.20 peak in 2026. Ordinary Intercity trains are slower and carry no supplement at all.

RET metro lines D and E run under the river, with line E carrying on to Den Haag Centraal; trams cover the rest. For the Maas itself the water taxis are a working service rather than a sightseeing boat, and much the best way to reach Katendrecht.

May to September, when the roof terraces, the river and the festival calendar are all working at once.

November to February: the cheapest rooms of any large Dutch city, and the museums more or less to yourself.

Early July for North Sea Jazz, and any weekend a big conference or concert fills Ahoy.

Start under the Markthal ceiling with coffee, then walk two minutes to the Cube Houses and up into the show cube.

Cross to the Museumpark for the Depot's mirrored bowl and its roof terrace. The original Boijmans building beside it is shut for a long renovation.

Back down to the Markthal floor, or Witte de Withstraat, which has the densest run of kitchens in the centre.

Spido from the Erasmusbrug for seventy-five minutes of working port, then a water taxi across to Katendrecht.

Eat on Deliplein, then take the water taxi back for Witte de Withstraat, which holds the longest run of late bars in the city.

Nineteen eighteenth-century windmills standing in a line along the polder dykes, a UNESCO site, reachable by waterbus down the river in well under an hour.

Half an hour north: Vermeer's town, a canal-lined market square between two churches, and an old centre considerably quieter than Amsterdam's.