The question of what is the capital city of the Netherlands is not a completely straightforward one. Although Amsterdam is constitutionally the capital of the country because of its dominance and where the monarchs are sworn in, but for most of the history of the Dutch nation the seat of government has been at The Hague. That means that the royals maintain palaces in The Hague as well as the one in Amsterdam, the parliament meets in The Hague, and the supreme court and the government ministries are located there. So The Hague effectively has most of the functions of a capital city.

Like most capital cities The Hague (even if it's not really the capital) seems like an affluent and quite classy place . While other cities in the Netherlands have strong individual identities and self-governing independent cities, The Hague’s history is fully associated with the Dutch nation. With parliament and courts and ministries and all the people who lobby them, there are lots of high-paid people in the city and it shows in solidity of the grand houses that line its residential streets.

I guess I was a little surprised to arrive at the huge central train station and find it surrounded by a big modern high rise business center, like a smaller version of London’s Canary Wharf or Paris’s La Defense. The main way from the station to the historic city center is on a broad pedestrian mall surrounded by a forest of skyscrapers, and the current city hall isn’t a traditional Stadhuis like in other Dutch cities but a gigantic modernistic white building obviously inspired by the Dutch De Stijl design movement. Parts of it look like a Piet Mondrian painting.

The Hague’s old town is centered around the Binnenhof, or inner court, a fortress that has existed since the 1200s and has been enlarged and remodeled over the centuries but still has a medieval or renaissance feel about it . That’s especially true of the Ridderzaal, a knights’ hall that looks like a church from the outside. You can’t go into any of the buildings since they have official Dutch government functions, including the Parliament and Justice Ministry, housed in modern buildings on the same block which connect with the historic ones.

Beside the Binnenhof is a lake named the Hofvijver around which hotels, townhouses, and several museums cluster. Between the Maurithuis, the Prince William Gallery, The Hague Historical Museum, the Bredius Museum, and the Gevangenpoort, they kept me busy for most of the day. The Hague seems to have an inordinately large number of monuments and statues of prominent people. The residential streets are lined with impressive neoclassical mansions that give it a very wealthy and classy feel.

I was very impressed with The Hague, maybe partly because I had not heard too much about it previously and hadn’t formed much of an expectation of what it would be like. It seems as though most Americans who travel to The Netherlands treat the country as a one city nation and don’t see much other than Amsterdam. I can’t think of anyone I know who’s ever told me they have been to The Hague. That’s a shame because it really is a nice place and can be done as an easy day trip by train from Amsterdam.