The Hague and Scheveningen: Where Power Meets the Sea
The seat of Dutch democracy, home to Vermeer’s most beloved painting, and gateway to a sweeping North Sea shore — The Hague rewards every kind of curious traveller.
An introduction to The Hague and Scheveningen
There is a particular confidence to The Hague. It does not trumpet itself the way Amsterdam does, nor does it carry Rotterdam’s muscular post-war swagger. Instead, this handsome city of wide boulevards and canal-fronted mansions simply gets on with being rather important. It is the seat of the Dutch parliament, the home of the International Court of Justice, and the city where almost every foreign embassy in the Netherlands keeps its address. Diplomats cross the Lange Voorhout on their morning commute; schoolchildren queue outside the Mauritshuis to meet a girl they know only by her earring.
Known officially in Dutch as ‘s-Gravenhage — the Count’s Hedge — The Hague grew from a medieval hunting lodge built for the Count of Holland in the thirteenth century. The Binnenhof, the ancient complex at its political heart, has housed the Dutch parliament since the fifteenth century, making it one of the oldest seats of government in continuous use anywhere in the world. Yet the city wears that weight lightly. Sit at a pavement café on the Plein and you will find civil servants eating broodjes alongside tourists, none of them looking particularly oppressed by history.
Four kilometres to the west, Scheveningen provides the counterpoint: a proper seaside resort, broad and breezy, with a long sandy beach, an elegant early-twentieth-century promenade, and a pier that stretches out over the grey-green North Sea. The Kurhaus, a vast neo-Renaissance hotel that has stood on the seafront since 1885, sets the architectural tone. Come in summer and the beach clubs throb with life; come in winter and you will have the wind-whipped shore almost entirely to yourself.
Between city centre and coast lies the Statenkwartier, a neighbourhood of tree-lined streets, Art Nouveau facades, and the kind of independent food shops and café terraces that make a Sunday afternoon disappear with suspicious ease. The Hague asks relatively little of its visitors in the way of planning; it is a city in which you can follow your nose and stumble upon something wonderful at every turn. This guide is here to point you in the right direction.
In this email
- The Mauritshuis — Vermeer, Rembrandt, and the Dutch Golden Age
- The Binnenhof and the Peace Palace
- Escher in Het Paleis and Madurodam
- Scheveningen: beach, pier, and seafront life
- The Statenkwartier: boutiques, terraces, and the rose garden
- A multi-day itinerary, where to stay, and how to get there
Best time to visit: June to August brings warm weather and a lively Scheveningen beach scene. September is quietly magnificent — the third Tuesday of the month sees Prinsjesdag, when the Dutch monarch traditionally arrives by golden state coach at the Binnenhof to read the Speech from the Throne. May and early June offer fresh spring light for photography and noticeably fewer crowds at the museums.
Travel logistics: Den Haag Centraal station is served by direct trains from Amsterdam (around 50 minutes), Rotterdam (around 25 minutes), and Schiphol Airport (around 45 minutes). Trams 1, 9, and 16 run from the city centre to Scheveningen in under twenty minutes. The Hague is exceptionally cycle-friendly; hire a bike for the day and you can reach everywhere in this guide without difficulty.
The Mauritshuis — Vermeer, Rembrandt, and the Dutch Golden Age
If you see only one painting on your visit to The Hague, it will almost certainly be the same one that everyone comes to see. Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, painted around 1665, hangs in the Mauritshuis and the effect of meeting it in person is quietly arresting. Reproduced so many times that it has become wallpaper, the original insists on being noticed differently — the soft light falling on her collar, the ambiguity of her gaze, the earring itself catching the light with an almost impossible luminosity. It is not a large painting, which surprises people. But then, neither is the Mona Lisa.
The Mauritshuis itself is reason enough to visit. Built between 1636 and 1641 as a townhouse for Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen — a Dutch governor of colonial Brazil and one of the seventeenth century’s more improbably well-travelled individuals — it became a royal picture gallery in 1822 and today holds one of the finest small collections of Dutch Golden Age painting in the world. The building sits on the Hofvijver, the Court Pond, its pale classical facade reflecting in the water alongside the towers of the Binnenhof next door. The reflection alone is worth lingering over.
Beyond Vermeer, the collection is dense with extraordinary work. Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (1632) occupies an entire wall and rewards slow looking — the expressions of the assembled physicians range from scholarly interest to something approaching unease. Carel Fabritius’s small Goldfinch (1654), painted in the very year the artist was killed in the Delft gunpowder explosion, has a trompe-l’œil intimacy that stops visitors mid-step. There are rooms of Jan Steen’s domestic comedies, Paulus Potter’s almost unnervingly lifelike cattle, and a second Vermeer — View of Delft — which Proust considered the most beautiful painting in the world. He was not obviously wrong.
Book tickets in advance, particularly in summer. Audio guides are available and genuinely earn their keep; the commentary on the Girl with a Pearl Earring alone justifies the small outlay. Allow at least two hours, and more if you are the sort of person who tends to sit down in front of a painting and think.
The Binnenhof and the Peace Palace
The Binnenhof — the Inner Court — rewards the simple act of walking into it. Pass through the archway from the Buitenhof square and you step into a medieval courtyard of towers, gabled rooflines, and grey stone that has stood at the centre of Dutch political life for centuries. The Ridderzaal, the Hall of Knights, anchors the space: a magnificent Gothic hall dating from around 1280 whose twin towers and great rose window give the complex much of its fairy-tale silhouette. On Prinsjesdag each September, the monarch arrives here in the golden state coach and parliament assembles in full ceremonial dress. For the rest of the year, it is a place of government, history, and good photographs.
The complex has undergone extensive renovation in recent years, so it is worth checking current access arrangements before visiting. The exterior courtyard and guided tours offer the most coherent picture of what the Binnenhof has meant to Dutch history. Afterwards, stand on the bridge beside the Mauritshuis and look back across the Hofvijver: towers, flags, and water arrange themselves into something that looks like a seventeenth-century painting because, in essence, it is one.
A twenty-minute walk north-west through broad diplomatic streets brings you to the Peace Palace — one of The Hague’s most affecting buildings. Funded largely by the American industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who donated the equivalent of one and a half million dollars towards its construction, and officially opened in August 1913, the Vredespaleis is a neo-Gothic and Renaissance confection of red brick and sandstone that now houses the International Court of Justice, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, and the Hague Academy of International Law. The gardens are freely accessible, and guided tours of the interior — where delegates from across the world come to settle disputes by argument rather than force — can be booked in advance. There is something genuinely moving about standing in a building constructed, in good faith, to end war, and opened twelve months before the worst war the world had yet seen.
Escher in Het Paleis and Madurodam
Maurits Cornelis Escher was born in Leeuwarden in 1898 and spent much of his working life in Italy and Switzerland, but The Hague has claimed him by housing the world’s finest collection of his work in a former royal palace on the Lange Voorhout. Escher in Het Paleis opened in 2002 and occupies the Winter Palace — a graceful eighteenth-century building that served as a residence for Queen Emma and later Queen Wilhelmina. The combination of setting and subject is inspired: Escher’s endlessly recursive woodcuts and lithographs — staircases that ascend and descend simultaneously, hands drawing themselves into existence, fish becoming birds mid-flight — feel entirely at home in a palace where rooms lead into each other in satisfying and slightly disorienting ways.
The museum takes visitors through Escher’s development from a landscape printmaker to the mathematical wizard of popular imagination, with interactive installations that let you step inside his geometrical paradoxes. It is genuinely enjoyable for visitors of all ages, and the permanent collection is supplemented by thoughtful temporary exhibitions. Allow the better part of a morning and leave time for the café, which occupies one of the more charming rooms in the building.
On the northern edge of Scheveningen, a short tram ride from the city, Madurodam offers a very different kind of wonder. Opened in June 1952 and named in memory of George Maduro — a Dutch Jewish resistance fighter who died in Dachau concentration camp in 1945 — this miniature park presents the Netherlands at a scale of 1:25, with exquisite models of everything from the Amsterdam canal houses and the Binnenhof to Kinderdijk’s windmills and the port of Rotterdam. Children adore it utterly. Adults find themselves bending down to peer at the detail for considerably longer than they expected. The story of Maduro himself, told in the entrance exhibition, adds a tenderness that lifts this well above the average theme attraction.
Scheveningen: Beach, Pier, and Seafront Life
The Dutch have been coming to Scheveningen since the early nineteenth century, when it became fashionable to take sea-air cures on the North Sea coast. The resort that grew around that habit is a proper, unselfconscious seaside town — grand in its bones, cheerful in its current incarnation, and blessed with a beach that runs for miles in either direction. The sand is pale and fine, the sea is cold even in July, and on a clear evening the horizon glows with a horizontal light that is unlike anything you see inland.
The pier is the resort’s most distinctive landmark. The current structure opened in 1961 and extends some 380 metres over the water, with restaurants, an observation tower, and a bungee-jump platform for those who feel the North Sea wind has not quite done enough to them. Sunset from the far end, with the light flattening across the water and the beach clubs softening into silhouette, is one of the lovelier experiences this coastline offers.
The Boulevard, the promenade running the length of the beachfront, is lined with beach clubs, fish restaurants, and, at its centre, the Kurhaus. This vast neo-Renaissance building has stood here since 1885 and now operates as the Steigenberger Kurhaus Hotel; its ballroom ceiling alone justifies stepping inside, even if you are not a guest. For something quieter, the Beelden aan Zee museum, tucked into the dunes at the northern end of the beach, houses an outstanding collection of international figurative sculpture — bronzes mostly, some monumental — displayed across indoor galleries and terraced outdoor spaces overlooking the sea. It is one of the more unexpected and rewarding museum experiences in the Netherlands, and rarely crowded.
The Statenkwartier: Boutiques, Terraces, and the Rose Garden
Between the city centre and Scheveningen, the Statenkwartier offers the most human-scaled pleasures of any neighbourhood in The Hague. Named for the States General, it developed through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a residential quarter for the professional classes, and its streets still carry the composed, leafy confidence of that era. The architecture is a mix of Amsterdam School and Art Nouveau styles, with elaborately decorated facades and deep-set windows that catch the afternoon light beautifully.
The neighbourhood’s social spine is the Frederick Hendriklaan — known with great local affection as De Fred — a street of independent boutiques, delicatessens, organic bakeries, Italian coffee bars, and wine merchants that makes a serious claim to being one of the better places to spend a morning in the Netherlands. It is the kind of street where residents stop to talk to each other outside the cheese shop, where the greengrocer knows his customers by name, and where you are very likely to spend more time and money than you had planned. Neither of those things will feel like a mistake.
A ten-minute walk north brings you to the Westbroekpark, where the rose garden contains more than twenty thousand plants across three hundred varieties. It is at its most magnificent in June and July, when the paths between the beds fill with a colour and scent that verges on the theatrical. The park also hosts the International Rose Competition each June — a gentle and entirely Dutch sort of event, conducted with great seriousness by people wearing sensible shoes. Beyond the roses, there is an open-air theatre, room for children to run, and enough space to spend a pleasantly aimless afternoon.
A Multi-Day Itinerary
Day one: Art and government
Begin at the Mauritshuis when it opens — pre-book tickets — and allow two to three hours for the collection. Emerge onto the Hofvijver and walk to the Binnenhof for a tour of the medieval heart of Dutch democracy. Lunch on the Plein, where café terraces spread in the sunshine. Spend the afternoon at the Peace Palace, combining a guided tour with a walk through the surrounding diplomatic quarter. Dinner in the city centre — the streets around the Grote Markt offer strong options across several price points.
Day two: Escher, miniatures, and the sea
Spend the morning at Escher in Het Paleis on the Lange Voorhout. Take tram 1 or 9 to Madurodam and allow a generous two hours in the miniature park. Continue to Scheveningen — only minutes further — for lunch at one of the Boulevard’s beach clubs. Walk the seafront in the afternoon, explore Beelden aan Zee, and time your end of day for the pier at sunset. Dinner in Scheveningen, where the fish restaurants do excellent work with North Sea catches.
Day three: The Statenkwartier at leisure
A late morning on De Fred for coffee, browsing, and provisions. Walk or cycle through the neighbourhood to the Westbroekpark in time for the rose garden at its peak. The afternoon is yours: return to a museum you did not quite finish, take a longer walk along the Scheveningen shore, or find a terrace and simply watch the city go about its composed and confident business.
Where to Stay
The Steigenberger Kurhaus Hotel in Scheveningen is the grandest option and one of the great seafront hotels of northern Europe — a neo-Renaissance pile with rooms overlooking the beach and a ballroom that has hosted royalty and rock acts alike since 1885. It is a genuine splurge and genuinely worth it.
In the city centre, Hotel Des Indes on the Lange Voorhout is the traditional choice for visiting dignitaries and anyone who appreciates a five-star hotel that takes its history seriously. The building dates from 1858 and the public rooms are magnificent without being oppressive.
For something more characterful and considerably lighter on the budget, the Statenkwartier has well-run boutique hotels and apartment-style stays that put you in the best neighbourhood for evening walks, excellent independent coffee, and the kind of bakery that makes early rising feel like a reward rather than a sacrifice.
In Closing
The Hague has a habit of surprising visitors who arrive expecting a dutiful capital of committees and go home having fallen genuinely in love with it. The Mauritshuis alone would justify the journey — but add the medieval sweep of the Binnenhof, the serene ambition of the Peace Palace, the coastal generosity of Scheveningen, and the particular pleasure of an afternoon on De Fred, and what you have is a city of real variety and unexpected warmth. It asks very little of you and gives back rather a lot. Pack a warm layer for the pier. The North Sea wind is part of the experience, and you will be glad of it.