Maastunnel exhibition marks 150 years of city cleaning

FROM 1 NOV '26 to 1 MAR '27 | A new photo exhibition in the Maastunnel will trace 150 years of keeping Rotterdam clean, from horse-drawn carts and rubbish bicycles to modern sweepers and specialist vehicles. Al 150 jaar op pad voor een schone stad opens on 1 November and fills the forty exhibition frames alongside the tunnel's escalators until 1 March 2027.

From horse and cart to modern cleaning crews

Rotterdam's streets have changed dramatically over the past century and a half, and so has the work required to keep them clean. The new exhibition follows that development through photographs of the people, tools and vehicles used by the city's cleaning service.

Early images show a very different operation, with horse-drawn carts and bicycles used to collect rubbish. Later photographs introduce increasingly specialised equipment, including sweeping machines, refuse trucks and vehicles designed to deal with the changing demands of a growing city.

The exhibition also uses street cleaning as a way to look at Rotterdam itself. New neighbourhoods, different types of waste and changes to the city's streets repeatedly forced the municipal service to find new solutions.

The people behind a cleaner Rotterdam

The machinery may be eye-catching, but the exhibition is also intended as a tribute to generations of municipal cleaning workers.

Their work has remained a constant even as Rotterdam expanded and the technology around waste collection changed. The images document people who know the city's streets closely and whose work often becomes most noticeable when it is suddenly not being done.

V Female Photo Agency assembled the exhibition using material from sources including Stadsarchief Rotterdam and the Museum Rotterdam collection.

A free Maastunnel photo exhibition traces 150 years of Rotterdam city cleaning, from horse-drawn carts to modern vehicles, from 1 November to 1 March.

Forty frames beside the Maastunnel escalators

The Maastunnel has gradually become an unusual exhibition space in its own right. Forty frames installed along the escalators are used to tell changing stories about Rotterdam and its residents.

Museum Rotterdam and the Municipality of Rotterdam jointly oversee the exhibition programme. The displays change three times a year. One recurring exhibition focuses on the Maastunnel itself, combining historical photographs with images of its renovation and restoration, while the other exhibitions give different Rotterdam subjects, places and stories their turn on the walls.

The city-cleaning exhibition is one of those rotating stories.

There is also an interactive element. A special photo wall allows visitors to picture themselves as a Rotterdam city cleaner, briefly putting commuters and pedestrians into the same story as the workers shown in the historical photographs.

A small exhibition you encounter on the way

Part of the appeal is that you do not need to make a separate museum visit. The photographs sit along the escalators used by pedestrians and cyclists travelling through the Maastunnel between Rotterdam-Noord and Rotterdam-Zuid.

That makes the exhibition something you encounter as part of an ordinary journey through the city, although there is enough material to justify slowing down rather than treating the escalator ride purely as transport.

Al 150 jaar op pad voor een schone stad is free to see from 1 November 2026 until 1 March 2027.

A free Maastunnel photo exhibition traces 150 years of Rotterdam city cleaning, from horse-drawn carts to modern vehicles, from 1 November to 1 March.

How to get there

The photographs are displayed beside the escalators leading to the Maastunnel's pedestrian and cycle tunnel. You can enter from either side of the Nieuwe Maas.

On the north side, the entrance is at Parkkade 30. The south-side entrance is at Charloisse Hoofd 29. Both addresses are listed by the Municipality of Rotterdam for the Maastunnel's pedestrian and cycle access.