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From 13 DEC 2025 to 8 MAR 2026 | Kunsthal Rotterdam presents Destination Rotterdam, an exhibition that traces how Rotterdam evolved from a classical merchant city into a modern metropolis at the turn of the twentieth century. It was a period when curious travellers — armed with the iconic red Baedeker guide — came to explore a city known for its clean streets, modern harbour works and growing international appeal.
Image: Tourists at the Oosterkade, August Willem van Voorden, c. 1915. Courtesy of Museum Rotterdam.
Destination Rotterdam at Kunsthal Rotterdam
From 13 December 2025 to 8 March 2026, Kunsthal Rotterdam presents Destination Rotterdam, an exhibition that explores how visitors have viewed the city over the past 125 years. Set in Hall 5 of the Kunsthal, the exhibition focuses on the period around 1900, when Rotterdam was rapidly changing and beginning to appear more frequently on international travel itineraries.
At the heart of the exhibition is the red Baedeker travel guide (Baedeker-reisgids), published by German publisher Karl Baedeker. These compact books, issued in several languages, offered travellers practical information, detailed maps, and suggestions on what to see. Rotterdam first appeared in a Baedeker guide in 1835 as a recommended stop on a journey along the Rhine. In Destination Rotterdam, locations described in the guide are brought together through around twenty paintings from the collection of Museum Rotterdam, allowing visitors to compare the city on the page with the city on canvas.
Rotterdam through Baedeker’s eyes
The exhibition invites visitors to follow in the footsteps of early tourists who arrived in a city that was very much in motion. In the 1871 edition, Baedeker described Rotterdam as “one of the cleanest, least smoky, and most pleasant of all the merchant cities.” That short line offers a glimpse of how the city presented itself before major harbour expansions reshaped its skyline and waterfront.
Soon after, the construction of the Nieuwe Waterweg [New Waterway] and expansion towards the south led to a sharp rise in shipping activities and population growth. Artists such as Johan Barthold Jongkind and Marius Richters documented this transformation, from the activity at Leuvehaven to the elevated railway over the Kolk. Their works, included in the exhibition, show Rotterdam at the point where traditional harbours, new infrastructure and industrial modernity began to overlap.
From merchant city to modern metropolis
By the end of the nineteenth century, new landmarks further altered the city’s profile. The high-rise office building Het Witte Huis [the White House], completed in 1898, signalled a shift from an inland harbour town towards an urban district with a more vertical skyline. Paintings of busy quays, rail structures and commercial streets suggest how visitors arriving with a Baedeker in hand would have encountered a city negotiating between old and new.
The exhibition also touches on the social and cultural life around the harbour. A work by August Willem van Voorden shows three well-dressed women on the Oosterkade, absorbed in their red guidebook, while views of the Oudehaven [Old Harbour] include large posters advertising theatres and dance halls to passing tourists. Destination Rotterdam is presented as a collaboration between Kunsthal Rotterdam and Museum Rotterdam, linking an international exhibition venue with a city museum collection that has preserved many of these historical scenes.
How to get to Kunsthal Rotterdam
Kunsthal Rotterdam is located in the Museumpark, next to Erasmus MC and close to other cultural institutions such as Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and the Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam. The area sits on the edge of the city centre, a short walk or tram ride from Rotterdam Centraal, and is surrounded by green space and busy traffic routes along the Westzeedijk.
Visitors arriving by car are advised to use the Museumpark car park, while those travelling by public transport can reach the area via tram stops such as Vasteland and Kievitslaan, followed by a short walk through the Museumpark.
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