Travel Guide to Museums and Galleries in Rotterdam, Netherlands

Rotterdam, the Netherlands’ second largest city, is a bold and vibrant metropolis where innovation, resilience, and creativity converge. Famous for its daring architecture, the largest port in Europe and dynamic cultural scene, Rotterdam stands apart from the more traditional Dutch charm of Amsterdam.

Its modern identity, however, is shaped by tragedy and rebirth. During World War II, German bombings in May 1940 destroyed the medieval centre, leaving only fragments of the old city. Instead of rebuilding the past, Rotterdam boldly embraced the future, commissioning avant-garde architects and urban planners to redesign the city.

Rotterdam

Today, this spirit of reinvention has made Rotterdam a playground of contemporary architecture, sustainable design, and experimental culture. This year, its museums and galleries are buzzing with fresh openings, ambitious ideas, and a few playful surprises that make the city feel like one giant, creative experiment. It’s not just a port city, it’s a laboratory of the future.

Museumpark

Rotterdam’s art scene clusters in and around Museumpark, a swathe of green near the centre, where you can hop between several major venues on foot: Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, Het Nieuwe Instituut and the Kunsthal.

Depot Boijmans

Though the main Boijmans museum is closed for renovation, its futuristic Depot introduces art lovers to a world usually cordoned off—the museum’s entire collection, laid bare. This mirrored bowl, rising forty metres into the skyline, openly defies the typical presentation of art.

No curated tours, no guided narratives—just raw, limitless access to 151,000 works cradled by steel and light, with restoration labs humming below. From precious Bruegel and Rubens to obscure sketches, this vault of creativity is an invitation to discovery. A rooftop forest crowns the experience, offering 75 trees, fresh air, and a surreal vantage point over the city while eating at Renilde Restaurant.

Nieuwe Instituut

Just across from the Depot, the Het Nieuwe Instituut is Netherlands’ national museum for architecture, design and digital culture. 2025’s program asks if architecture can create an emotional experience with the work of architect Ma Yansong and the global practice MAD Architects. They push the boundaries of contemporary architecture by reimagining the relationship between people, nature and the built environment.

The exhibition takes you on a journey through Ma Yansong’s ideas and working methods: from his critique of modernism and globalisation to his bold, fluid designs – from homes and artistic installations to large-scale cultural and commercial complexes. It’s particularly relevant to Rotterdam as he designed the distinctive “Tornado” staircase in the new Fenix Museum.

Kunsthal Rotterdam

At another end of the park, celebrating architecture as performance, this gallery by Rem Koolhaas is a stage for 25 exhibitions per year—simultaneously. The Kunsthal’s identity is its churn: blockbuster photography one month, fashion, design, or sculpture the next.

CUTE is an exhibition that shows how cuteness has both conquered and deregulated our world. Over fifty artists and collectives from all over the world explore the power of cute – as well as its flip side. Themes are Cry Baby, Play Together, Monstrous Other, Sugar-Coated Pill, and Hypersonic. They reveal that cuteness has many faces – from sweet, innocent, and comforting to critical, ambiguous, and occasionally even disturbing.

Museum Rotterdam

Tucked within a modest building in the Delfshaven district, this is an intimate but powerful place that deals with WW2 In Rotterdam Unlike large-scale national museums, it feels personal – almost like stepping into the living rooms, workshops, and cellars of those who experienced the war first hand.

It’s chilling to see how quickly daily life unravelled after the German invasion in May 1940. But the museum doesn’t dwell only on destruction; it highlights the human spirit of resistance. Exhibits detail the work of underground newspapers, sabotage missions, and the bravery of ordinary Rotterdam citizens who hid Jewish families or smuggled food during the “Hunger Winter” of 1944-45.

Euromast Tower

After exploring the WWII Museum, it’s fitting to visit the Euromast, a 185-meter-high observation tower .just a short walk away. Where the museum tells the story of wartime destruction, the Euromast embodies post war rebirth and optimism. Built in 1960 as part of the Floriade horticultural exhibition, the tower was a bold architectural statement at the time.

You can dine in the revolving restaurant or go higher in a glass walled elevator to the very top. As you ascend, Rotterdam unfurls beneath you in a breath-taking panorama. On the ground floor is a new experience called The Rise of Rotterdam where you literally step into the story of the city. In two immersive rooms, you’ll experience how Rotterdam became what it is today: from a land of water and mud to a colourful metropolis.

FENIX Museum of Migration

The newest reason to book a cultural weekend is FENIX, Rotterdam’s international art museum of migration, on Katendrecht, a former docklands district that once sent thousands across the oceans. The building’s showstopper—a shimmering, double-helix “Tornado” staircase designed by MAD Architects—spirals 30 metres to a rooftop platform with skyline views.

Inside in the renovated warehouse, FENIX uses contemporary art and powerful personal stories to trace why people move and how migration shapes identity. On the ground floor, anchoring personal stories of 2,000 suitcases is the Suitcase Labyrinth. The Family of Migrants brings together iconic and lesser-known images of migration from 136 photographers covering the late 19th century to the present

Upstairs All Directions showcases the Fenix collection, an outstanding array of works by over a hundred artists from around the world. It features paintings, sculptures, videos, installations and photographs by both emerging talents and internationally celebrated artists. The pieces on display serve as tangible reminders of migration’s moving history, including a section of the Berlin Wall, a refugee camp tent and one of the first passports ever issued to a stateless individual.