Kop van Zuid Rotterdam

This neighbourhood is the pride of the city. Rotterdam has pretensions not just to be a world port, but also a city with global appeal. Manhattan on the Meuse, according to the city’s idealists. In the past huge passenger liners departed from the Wilhelmina pier, bound for distant lands. Now the former headquarters of the Holland America Line has been transformed into Hotel New York, a favoured haunt of Rotterdam’s fashionable elite and other worldly cosmopolitans. The Erasmus Bridge links the south bank of the river Meuse with the old city centre, beating heart of the city before it was razed to the ground in the wartime bombardments of 1940. Elegantly the swan stretches its long neck, bound for the future. Those at work and at play in the city’s striking high-rise watch the light playing over its wings. Such beauty brings comfort.