Rotterdam (Gouda)

Netherlands

Rotterdam, a port city in the province of South Holland in the Netherlands, grew from a dam built on the river Rotte around 1270 and received city rights in 1340. It is today the country's largest port and one of the busiest in the world. The humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, known as Erasmus of Rotterdam, was born there around 1466 or 1469 (sources differ); he was schooled in the region, including at Gouda, and entered religious life at a house of canons near that town. The chemist Jacobus van 't Hoff, winner of the first Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1901, was born in Rotterdam. German bombing on 14 May 1940 destroyed most of the city centre.