Portal:Netherlands
Welcome to the Netherlands Portal
Welkom bij het Nederlandportaal!
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The Netherlands, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Netherlands consists of twelve provinces; it borders Germany to the east and Belgium to the south, with a North Sea coastline to the north and west. It shares maritime borders with the United Kingdom, Germany, and Belgium. The official language is Dutch, with West Frisian as a secondary official language in the province of Friesland. Dutch, English, and Papiamento are official in the Caribbean territories. People from the Netherlands are referred to as Dutch.
The Netherlands has been a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a unitary structure since 1848. The country has a tradition of pillarisation (separation of citizens into groups by religion and political beliefs) and a long record of social tolerance, having legalised prostitution and euthanasia, along with maintaining a liberal drug policy. The Netherlands allowed women's suffrage in 1919 and was the first country to legalise same-sex marriage in 2001. Its mixed-market advanced economy has the eleventh-highest per capita income globally. The Hague holds the seat of the States General, cabinet, and Supreme Court. The Port of Rotterdam is the busiest in Europe. Schiphol is the busiest airport in the Netherlands, and the fourth busiest in Europe. Being a developed country, the Netherlands is a founding member of the European Union, eurozone, G10, NATO, OECD, and WTO, as well as a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. It hosts intergovernmental organisations and international courts, many of which are in The Hague. (Full article...)
Selected biography
Having achieved youthful success as a portrait painter, his later years were marked by personal tragedy and financial hardship. Yet his drawings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high and for twenty years he taught nearly every important Dutch painter. Rembrandt's greatest creative triumphs are exemplified especially in his portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible. The self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and with the utmost sincerity.
Did you know (auto-generated)

- ... that Hendrik Wortman oversaw the early development of the Zuiderzee Works, which dammed off the Zuiderzee to create arable land in the Netherlands?
- ... that Femke is the most common feminine given name of West Frisian origin in the Netherlands?
- ... that Leonie ter Braak made her film debut in The Marriage Escape, the film of Dutch origin with the most cinema ticket sales in 2020?
- ... that Tobie Goedewaagen, a minister under the Nazi occupation government, fled the Netherlands with his belongings in a bedspread?
- ... that Bearded Man with a Beret by the Dutch artist Jan Lievens is an example of a tronie?
- ... that Harald Hasselbach, the only Dutch Super Bowl champion, lived in four continents in his youth?
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