The Secrets of The Hague

You stand at the very heart of Dutch governance. The Binnenhof — literally ‘Inner Court’ — has served as the centre of political power in the Netherlands since Count Floris IV of Holland bought this plot of land in 1229 and began building a residence here around 1230. What started as a modest hunting lodge beside a pond grew into the sprawling complex you see today.

For nearly eight hundred years, the fate of a nation has been decided within these walls. The States-General of the Netherlands still meets here, making it the oldest parliamentary complex still in use anywhere in the world. At its heart stands the Ridderzaal — the Hall of Knights — a magnificent Gothic hall built around 1280 by Count Floris V. Every third Tuesday of September, King Willem-Alexander rides in a golden coach to the Ridderzaal to deliver the Troonrede, the Speech from the Throne, opening the parliamentary year. The Binnenhof underwent a massive renovation beginning in 2021, a project expected to take years, to preserve this irreplaceable seat of democracy for future generations.

You are looking at the most iconic building in Dutch politics. The Ridderzaal — Hall of Knights — was commissioned by Count Floris V around 1280 as a great banqueting hall. Its massive dimensions — 40 metres long, 20 metres wide, and 26 metres to the peak of its wooden vaulted ceiling — made it one of the largest secular Gothic halls in Europe at the time.

But the hall’s purpose has shifted many times. It served as a marketplace, a drill hall, a hospital ward, and even a public promenade before being restored to its former glory in the 19th century. Since 1904, the Ridderzaal has hosted Prinsjesdag — the ceremonial opening of the Dutch parliamentary year. On the third Tuesday of September, the monarch arrives in the Gouden Koets (Golden Coach), delivers the Speech from the Throne outlining government policy, and departs to cheering crowds.

You stand before an elegant Dutch Classical mansion that houses one of the most celebrated art collections on Earth. The Mauritshuis was built between 1636 and 1641 for Count Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, the governor of Dutch Brazil. The architect was Jacob van Campen, also responsible for Amsterdam’s Royal Palace.

Inside these intimate rooms hang some of the most recognisable paintings in Western art. Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring — sometimes called ‘the Mona Lisa of the North’ — gazes at you from a small room on the upper floor. Nearby hangs Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, a revolutionary group portrait from 1632 that transformed how painters depicted the human body.

You stand before the most important building in international law. The Peace Palace — Vredespaleis in Dutch — was built between 1907 and 1913, funded almost entirely by a donation of 1.5 million US dollars from the Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie. It was designed by the French architect Louis Cordonnier in a grand Neo-Renaissance style, using materials donated by nations around the world: marble from Italy, jasper from Russia, silk carpets from Persia, porcelain vases from China.

The Peace Palace is the seat of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. Here, disputes between sovereign nations are adjudicated — border conflicts, genocide cases, maritime rights.

You stand before the oldest building in The Hague’s city centre. The Grote Kerk, or Great Church, officially the Sint-Jacobskerk (St. James’s Church), has dominated this spot since the late 14th century. The current structure is largely 15th and 16th century, a late Gothic hall church with a distinctive hexagonal tower.

The church has witnessed the full drama of Dutch history. During the Beeldenstorm of 1566 — the wave of Calvinist iconoclasm that swept the Low Countries — its Catholic statues and altarpieces were destroyed. It became a Protestant church and has remained so ever since. The church also houses the coats of arms of the Knights of the Golden Fleece, painted on wooden panels, commemorating a chapter meeting held here in 1456 by Philip the Good of Burgundy.

You stand before a stately 18th-century palace on one of The Hague’s most elegant avenues. Since 2002, this former winter residence of Queen Mother Emma has been home to the world’s largest permanent collection of works by Maurits Cornelis Escher — the Dutch graphic artist whose impossible staircases, infinite loops, and tessellated lizards have captivated millions.

The museum displays over 130 of his prints and drawings, arranged thematically across the palace’s ornate rooms. You can trace his artistic evolution from early Italian landscapes to the mathematically inspired masterworks like Relativity (1953), with its three incompatible gravity fields, and Waterfall (1961), where water appears to flow perpetually uphill.

You have reached the North Sea. Scheveningen — technically a district of The Hague, not a separate town — has been a fishing village since the 14th century and a seaside resort since the early 19th century. The pier was originally built in 1901, destroyed by the German occupation forces in 1943 as part of the Atlantic Wall defences, and rebuilt in its current form in 1961.

Scheveningen’s most famous contribution to history is linguistic. During World War II, Dutch resistance fighters used the word ‘Scheveningen’ as a shibboleth — a password to identify German spies posing as Dutch citizens. The ‘sch’ combination at the start is pronounced completely differently in Dutch than a German speaker would instinctively say it. Anyone who pronounced it with a German ‘sh’ sound was immediately suspected of being a spy.

You are about to step into a painting. The Panorama Mesdag is a cylindrical painting measuring 14 metres in height and over 120 metres in circumference — the largest circular painting in Europe and one of the oldest surviving panoramas in the world. It was painted in 1881 by Hendrik Willem Mesdag with assistance from his wife Sientje and several other artists.

You climb a spiral staircase and emerge onto a viewing platform surrounded by an unbroken 360-degree view of Scheveningen as it looked in 1881: the dunes, the fishing village, the beach, the sea, and the distant spires of The Hague. A false terrain of real sand, shells, and broken fencing blurs the boundary between the three-dimensional foreground and the painted canvas, creating a trompe-l’oeil effect so convincing that visitors reportedly tried to walk into the painted beach.

You are walking through the entire Netherlands — condensed to a scale of 1:25. Madurodam opened on 2 July 1952, and it is far more than a theme park. It was founded as a memorial to George Maduro, a young Jewish law student from Curaçao who fought with extraordinary bravery during the Battle of the Netherlands in May 1940, helping to defend the Grebbeberg line. He was awarded the Knight Fourth Class of the Military Order of William, the Netherlands’ highest military honour. Maduro was later arrested and died in Dachau concentration camp on 9 February 1945.

His parents, Joseph and Giorgina Maduro, founded this park in his memory, with all profits going to charity. The models are extraordinarily detailed: Schiphol Airport with moving planes, the Port of Rotterdam with working cranes, the Rijksmuseum, the Binnenhof, and windmills that actually turn.

You stand before the Gevangenpoort — the Prison Gate — a medieval gatehouse that served as a prison from the 14th to the 19th century. Built around 1296 as the main gate to the Binnenhof, it was converted into a state prison where political prisoners, accused witches, and common criminals were held, interrogated, and sometimes tortured.

The Gevangenpoort’s darkest hour came on 20 August 1672 — the Rampjaar, the ‘Disaster Year’ — when a frenzied mob dragged the brothers Johan and Cornelis de Witt from the prison and lynched them on the Plaats square just outside. Johan de Witt had been the Grand Pensionary (essentially prime minister) of the Dutch Republic, but the French invasion of 1672 turned the public against him. The mob mutilated the brothers’ bodies in scenes so horrific that they became a byword for political violence in Dutch history.