Urban Architecture

Growing prosperity in the 17th century led to the use of brick and stone to construct buildings with imposing façades that were decorated with scrolls and other forms of ornamentation. The leading architects of this period included Lieven de Key, Hendrick de Keyser and Philip Vinckboons. Centuries later the artist and architect H.P. Berlage also oversaw the realisation of ambitious ideas. In the 1930s he devised the iconic South Plan (Plan Zuid) for the southward expansion of the fast-growing city of Amsterdam. Some Dutch cities were hit hard by aerial bombardments during the Second World War, and when hostilities ended Rotterdam and Nijmegen threw themselves into ambitious urban recovery plans to rebuild the most heavily affected areas. New and modern neighbourhoods sprang up throughout the Netherlands during this post-war reconstruction period.