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Magazine
Time Out
Holland in a nutshell
SOMA BASU
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Madurodam in The Hague is a brilliant piece of miniature architecture that recreates Holland’s famous landmarks.
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Photo: Soma Basu
Recreated with care: Miniature buildings at Madurodam.
It is a terribly windy morning. I am waiting at a tram station on a deserted road in The Hague. With me is my landlord, a retired city guide geared to show his city’s hotspots and the din and drum.
As we wait for the tram, he laments my inability to cycle. But his toothless smile follows: “Our public transport system is very good. Besides, you and I have a strong pair of feet I suppose. It is best to walk in most European cities.”
I can’t agree less. “So back home in India, is Den Haag well known,” he kills time. I tell him as students we learn about the International Court of Justice located in The Hague. A faint smile breaks at the corner of his lips, “I thought as much and that is where we begin.” The tram arrives with only the driver with a smiling face, who apologises to me — the foreign visitor — for the bad weather!
We pass by the “Hofvijver” Lake and grab a good view of the historic Binnenhof (“Inner Court”) and Medieval Ridderzaal (“Knights’ Hall”), which now contain the Houses of Dutch Parliament and government offices.
The ride through The Lange Voorhout, a wide avenue, is enchanting. It contains many splendid houses (now home to several embassies), the Supreme Court, the city’s oldest and narrowest house and the most luxurious and famous “Hotel des Indes”.
Centre of power
The presence of bureaucratic establishment makes this third largest city in Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam, the actual power centre of the Government. But, it is not the official Capital of The Netherlands, a role set aside by the Dutch constitution for Amsterdam.
Soon we reach this brown, castle-like building called the Peace Palace. Designed by a French architect, the palace was a gift from the Scottish-American steel magnate Andrew Carnegie and houses the Permanent Court of International Justice.
The presence of over 150 international legal organisations consolidates the role of The Hague as a centre for international legal arbitration. The city authorities are currently seeking to establish an image of The Hague as the “legal capital of the world” and official recognition as an “international city of peace and justice”.
With a history more than seven centuries old, The Hague has a fair sprinkle of monuments, theatres, museums, castles and cultural institutions to boast of. I miss the famous Panorama Mesdag, currently under repair. It houses a cylindrical 360° “panoramic” painting 14 meters high and 120 meters long, depicting the sea-front at Scheveningen in the late 19th century. Made by Hendrik Willem Mesdag, it is presented in such a way that it almost looks like a real scene with a 3-D effect.
It’s past noon and the sun hasn’t quite picked up. Johan suggests in the absence of threatening clouds we do a “quick tour of Holland in The Hague”. This time the tram is crowded and practically empties at this smallest town called “Madurodam”, a brilliant piece of miniature architecture.
On 18,000 square metres, nearly 200 landmarks of The Netherlands have been recreated to a perfect detail on a 1:25 scale. Exquisite craftsmanship in building the miniature replicas is evident everywhere. It is an exciting Gulliver-experience as one has to kneel down for a closer look at the scale models of buildings, people and vehicles.
The real Gothic Church, the St. John’s Basilica at Hertogenbosch, which took 200 years to complete, took five years of labour at the Madurodam, same as the complicated and intricately designed Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. I bend down to see the 1642 painting “The Night Watch” by Rembrandt to utmost clarity.
Madurodam is a marvel of several things. A war museum commemorating Nazi resistance fighter George Maduro who died in the Dachau Concentration Camp in 1945. His parents financed the miniature town which was opened in 1952. It is a charity foundation because the profits support good causes related to young people. It is a colourful exhibition where one gets to know and see the entire country in a nutshell, how it has developed through the centuries.
Attention to detail
Intersecting the many exhibits are models of a football stadium with players singing the Dutch anthem before starting the match, the working harbour area at Rotterdam, Groningen railway station and the Schipol airport at Amsterdam. Indeed it is a fantastic amusement park for an adult and a child alike. The fun gets multiplied when one operates certain exhibits after inserting the smallest coin, the “dubbeltje” (10 cents): the chimes of Utrecht’s Cathedral Tower or the procession of carriages and the Guard of Honour given to the Queen arriving at the Parliament in her Golden Coach.
On one side is the Klompenfabriek factory where the famous wooden shoes, made of willow or poplar wood and still worn by farmers, are produced. Apparently, in 1960 there were over a thousand wooden shoe-makers making 3.8 million pairs. Today only 15 wooden shoe makers are left, producing 8,00,000 pairs.
But the wooden shoe business in Madurodam is in full operation. A Euro inserted in the slot machine starts the process. A loud grumble sounds from the building and seconds later a new pair of miniature shoes are spit out on to a slide and into a lorry, which starts moving and delivers the shoes right where I am standing on the public path. A good souvenir to carry back home.
Where are the people?
Interestingly, there are 66,000 Madurodamers in this miniature town and I see majority of them. But nowhere near this figure (even if I remove the zeros) do I see real people on the real streets of the Dutch city I am time-passing my day. That is till I reach Scheveningen, The Hague’s popular beach town.
Johan informs night life is mostly concentrated here around the sea front boulevard with its bars and restaurants, gambling halls and a cinema, as I dig into a typical Dutch pancake layered with ginger paste, nuts and cheese and dipped in honey syrup.
The seaside calms the day’s physical strain and the pancake introduces a new and different taste. I enjoy it all the more with a hot cup of tea as Johan repeats the often-heard phrase, “God created the world, the Dutch created The Netherlands”.
Since nearly a quarter of the Netherlands is water, much of the land was reclaimed from the North Sea and spawns an extensive system of dykes which protects the country today and gives the Dutch the liberty to claim the credit for their creation, besides of course the tulips and the windmills.
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