In the instructions on how to get to the correct part of the Stadhuis, we were told to go in the side entrance opposite the police station.
This is the police station.
It strikes me as kind of a girly color (and kind of a girly font choice as well) for a police station, but I guess it is certainly noticeable.
This is the Rotterdam Stadhuis. Although it isn't really that old, it is built in a pretty classically stadhuis style--vaugely gothic and really, really big. It is however, one of the oldest buildings in Rotterdam as it wasn't destroyed during the war. It is not quite a hundred years old.
It has a pretty clock-tower and loads and loads of gilding. There are
also lots of statutes and figures on the facade which appear to have meaning or which have writing around them.
The gilded banners are the symbols for Rotterdam and for annexed municipalities. For instance, the coat of arms of Delfshaven (where I go to church and which was incorporated a couple of hundred years ago) is second from the left on the top row. (It has green vertical stripes on it with a fish on one side and wheat on the other.)
The four statutes over the entrance (standing above the balcony with the red flowers) are supposed to represent the four virtues: entrepreneurship, management, reliability, and perseverance, which strike me as a particularly Dutch set of virtues.
There are also two free standing statues at the front of the Stadhuis.
One of the statues is of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. I had never heard of him before, so I had to go look him up and he was quite the guy.
He served with William the Silent during the Eighty-Years War and was somehow involved in the flooding and release of Leiden (which is a really terrific story that I will tell you about some other time) which made him a national hero. He was involved in the government after independence and was also a friend of Hugo Grotius. He was Pensionaris van Rotterdam and also Landsadvocaat.
Apparently, a Pensionaris is something like a City Attorney and Landsadvocaat is something like an Attorney General. So he was quite well connected and influential. Unfortunately, for him, though, he became well connected with the wrong sorts of people, including Jacobus Arminius. In the middle of the huge national turmoil over theology, Oldenbarnevelt aligned himself with the Remonstrants and, along with several folks, (and possibly because of some intra-governmental intrigue) he was beheaded in 1619.
Does anyone else think that clothing and portraiture styles of the era make this picture look strangely prescient?
The other statue is of Hugo Grotius, the great Dutch Statesman and political theorist. This statue stands out from the wall because there are inscriptions all around the base of the statue (really hard to read inscriptions, I might add).
This is from the front of the statue.
This inscription is:
Hugo Grotius
MDLXXXIII-MDCXLV (1583-1645)
This is from right side of the statue, as you are facing it. It is in Latin and says:
omnia fert batavis coelum aut mare: quicquid in orbe est huc venit, hollandum nomen ubique patet
Which may or may not be translated something like:
"The Dutch bear everything from heaven or from the sea: whatever the world offers. It is self-evident that he (Grotius, one presumes) came out of Holland."
This is from the rear of the statue and is in Dutch. It says:het gemeenterestuur van
rotterdam liet op voorstel
van historisch genootschap
rotterdamum dit beeld
oprichten om te gedenken
dat in 1613 tot pensionaris
van deze stad werd benoemd
hugo de groot
het wonder van holland
geleerde staatsman dichter
This is translated (more accurately than the Latin, I trust) as:
"The city has, on the suggestion of the Rotterdam historical society, erected this statue to remember Hugo Grotius, appointed Pensionaris of Rotterdam in 1613, the Miracle of Holland, Scholar, Statesman, Poet."
This is from the left side of the statue and says:datmen voor al de waerheyd hebbe
ende behoude: want sonder de
waerheyd en is het geen vrede
en is het geen liefde
This is a quote from Grotius (I think) and it took me a really long time to figure out what it said because the spelling and idiom are very old-fashioned and fairly different from modern Dutch, and my grasp of that is fairly shaky in any case. This says:
"In order that the truth may be preserved: for without truth there is neither peace nor love."
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