The Hague

The Binnenhof — a walled complex of courtyards and Gothic halls on the Hofvijver pond — has hosted the counts of Holland and then the Dutch parliament since the Middle Ages, making it one of the oldest parliament sites in the world still in use. The 13th-century Ridderzaal (Hall of Knights) at its centre is where the monarch delivers the speech from the throne each September, arriving by horse-drawn coach on Prinsjesdag (the third Tuesday of September — the city's grandest annual spectacle). Parts of the complex close during the long-running renovation, but the Hofvijver panorama — towers, gables and the prime minister's little office tower (het Torentje) mirrored in the pond — remains The Hague's defining picture. The surrounding political quarter, with the Plein's statue of William of Orange and its café terraces full of civil servants and journalists, is the place to feel how compact Dutch power is.

The Mauritshuis is one of the world's great small museums: a 17th-century city palace on the Hofvijver holding Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and View of Delft, Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, Fabritius's The Goldfinch and Potter's enormous Bull — a royal cabinet of Dutch Golden Age painting absorbed comfortably in two hours. Escher in Het Paleis, in the former royal winter palace on Lange Voorhout, devotes three floors to M.C. Escher's impossible staircases and tessellations. Kunstmuseum Den Haag — Berlage's monumental brick masterpiece — owns the world's largest Mondrian collection, including his final, unfinished Victory Boogie Woogie, alongside strong Delftware and fashion holdings. Panorama Mesdag completes the set with a 14-metre-high, 120-metre-round painting of Scheveningen as it looked in 1881, viewed from a dune-top platform inside the canvas — one of the oldest surviving panoramas in the world, still startlingly convincing.

The Hague's third identity is legal: the Peace Palace (Vredespaleis), opened in 1913 with Carnegie money, houses the International Court of Justice — the United Nations' principal judicial organ — and the Permanent Court of Arbitration in a neo-Renaissance palace whose gardens and gifted artworks (a Swiss clock tower, Japanese wall tapestries, a Russian vase the size of a car) were donated by the nations of the world. The visitor centre at the gate is free; guided tours of the palace itself run on selected days when the courts are not in session. Further out, the International Criminal Court occupies a striking modern complex by the dunes, and Europol, Eurojust and the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Nobel Peace Prize 2013) fill out the international zone — the densest concentration of international law on the planet, and the reason a city of half a million hosts well over a hundred embassies and missions.

Fifteen minutes by tram from the Binnenhof, Scheveningen is the Netherlands' best-known seaside resort: a wide sand beach backed by a promenade, the landmark Pier with its Ferris wheel and zipline, and the 19th-century Kurhaus hotel presiding over it all like a Belle Époque grande dame. The North Sea here is busy with kitesurfers and surf schools year round — Scheveningen has a genuine surf culture, wetsuits included — and the beach pavilions (strandtenten) serve everything from fresh herring to sundowner cocktails from spring to autumn. The working fishing harbour at the southern end keeps the old village character alive: this is the place for kibbeling and raw herring, and the June Vlaggetjesdag festival celebrates the arrival of the season's first new herring (Hollandse Nieuwe). Quieter Kijkduin, further south, offers dunes and family beaches without the promenade bustle.

The Hague is the royal family's working city: King Willem-Alexander's offices are at Noordeinde Palace, whose street — the Noordeinde — doubles as the city's gallery-and-boutique strip, and the family lives at Huis ten Bosch palace in the Haagse Bos woods. The Lange Voorhout, an L-shaped avenue under double rows of lime trees, is the most aristocratic streetscape in the Netherlands — embassies, the Hotel Des Indes, antique markets in summer and sculpture exhibitions in the open air. The Passage, the country's oldest covered shopping arcade (1885), connects the political centre to the shopping streets, and the Denneweg and Frederik Hendriklaan (in the embassy-quarter Statenkwartier) are the local favourites for independent shops, delis and cafés.

The Hague has the strongest Indonesian food culture in the Netherlands, rooted in its large Indo-Dutch community: rijsttafel and toko counters here set the national standard, from white-tablecloth rendang to takeaway spekkoek layer cake. The Haagse Markt on the Hobbemaplein is one of Europe's largest open-air markets — five hundred stalls of fish, Surinamese roti, Turkish flatbread, cheese and flowers four days a week, and the best illustration of the city's diversity. Chinatown around the Wagenstraat adds dim sum and roast duck; Scheveningen harbour covers the fish classics; and the Plein and Grote Markt squares carry the terrace and borrel culture into the evening. Local sweet: the Haagsche Hopje, a coffee-caramel candy the city has made since the 18th century.

Delft — Vermeer's home town, the royal burial church and the Delft Blue potteries — is fifteen minutes away by tram 1 or train, close enough to treat as a neighbourhood. Madurodam, between the centre and Scheveningen, compresses the whole country into a 1:25 scale model park that has charmed visitors since 1952 and remains genuinely well made. The Louwman Museum on the city's eastern edge holds one of the world's finest private car collections, from 1880s pioneers to James Bond's Aston Martin. And the Meijendel dunes north of the city offer a protected landscape of sand ridges, woods and cycle paths running all the way to Wassenaar — the green counterweight to a capital-density city, with rental bikes making the beach-and-dunes loop an easy half day.