Market Hall

Step inside the Markthal and the ceiling explodes into colour: an 11,000-square-metre mural of giant fruit, vegetables, grain, fish, flowers and insects curves overhead like the inside of a vast horseshoe, with market stalls and food halls on the floor beneath. The building, opened by Queen Máxima on 1 October 2014, is at once a covered market and a block of homes – its 228 apartments are wrapped around the arch, so residents' windows look down into the hall.

The design is by the Rotterdam architecture firm MVRDV. From outside the Markthal is a plain arch of grey natural stone; its two open ends are closed by huge glass walls hung from a net of steel cables, each 34 metres high and 42 metres wide, described as the largest cable-net facade in Europe. The interior artwork, Hoorn des Overvloeds ("Horn of Plenty"), is by the artists Arno Coenen and Iris Roskam. It was created digitally – the file ran to 1.47 terabytes and needed render servers of the kind used for animated films – and then printed onto some 4,000 perforated metal panels. On its appearance it was nicknamed the Sistine Chapel of Rotterdam; the church tower of St Lawrence even appears in the painted sky.

Below the hall lies a different story. During construction archaeologists found, seven metres underground, the remains of a tenth-century farmhouse belonging to Rotta, the settlement on the River Rotte that preceded Rotterdam, as well as traces of a later medieval dyke with houses. Finds from the excavation are displayed in a permanent exhibition, "De Tijdtrap" (the time staircase), along the stairs of the car park beneath the market. The building stands in the old heart of the city, a few steps from the Cube Houses and the Central Library – a cluster that sums up Rotterdam's taste for bold modern architecture.

Getting there

The Markthal is in central Rotterdam, next to Rotterdam Blaak railway and metro station. The nearest airport is Rotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM), about 5 km away.