Rotterdam

On May 14, 1940, German bombers destroyed Rotterdam's entire city center in a single raid. Over 1,150 people were killed and around 85,000 lost their homes. The Netherlands surrendered that same afternoon.

No other major Western European city lost its entire medieval center in WWII the way Rotterdam did.

The city started as a fishing settlement around 1270, when locals built a dam on the Rotte River, giving Rotterdam its name. It earned city rights in 1340 and grew into one of Europe's busiest trading ports.

Erasmus, the Renaissance humanist who challenged papal authority with sharp writing and sharper wit, was born here in 1469. He remains the city's most celebrated native.

For centuries, the port made Rotterdam Europe's most strategically valuable harbor. By the 20th century, it moved more cargo than any other port on the continent. That's exactly why German forces targeted it first in the 1940 campaign to force Dutch surrender.

After the war, Rotterdam didn't reconstruct what it lost. Architects used the blank slate to experiment, producing a skyline unlike anything else in Europe.

Piet Blom's Cube Houses from 1984 sit at impossible 45-degree angles. The Markthal, opened in 2014, is a horseshoe-shaped food market with a painted ceiling stretching 120 meters long and 40 meters high across the inside of the arch.

Walk the Erasmus Bridge, a cable-stayed span locals call "The Swan," across the Maas River to the Wilhelminapier waterfront. Climb the Euromast tower for a full view of Europe's largest port, where ships move around 435 million tonnes of cargo every year.

Take a water taxi to the Fenix Food Factory, a converted warehouse packed with local food producers and craft beer. Try kibbeling, battered fried cod sold fresh at market stalls, or grab stroopwafels at the Markthal before the lunch crowds arrive.

Step aboard the SS Rotterdam, the former flagship of the Holland America Line, now permanently docked as a hotel and museum. Duck into one of the Cube Houses open to visitors and see how someone actually lives inside a tilted box.