The shortlist

The coolest neighborhoods in The Hague.

The whole point of this site is one answer per city. In The Hague, the answer is Zeeheldenkwartier. But four neighborhoods made the shortlist, and the distances between them tell you how this city actually works. Here they are, in order.

01

Zeeheldenkwartier The pick

Zeeheldenkwartier is the only one of the four still moving. That was enough. Statenkwartier finished gentrifying years ago. Hofkwartier belongs to the king and the day-trippers. Regentessekwartier is maybe five years out. Zeeheldenkwartier sits right in the middle of its own story, which is where a neighborhood is most interesting. Two proper wine bars, Dr. Wines and Marius Wijncafé, within a few blocks of a children's bookshop and a plant shop. Bijmoedi and Arte Bianca feeding people who live upstairs, not people who bussed in. It wins because it's a place first and a destination second, and it never had to choose.

Read the full case for Zeeheldenkwartier →
02

Statenkwartier

The finished product. Frederik Hendriklaan, De Fred to anyone who lives here, is one of the best shopping streets in the country, anchored by family businesses like Brabants Lederwarenhuis, on the strip since '72. But the expats arrived, prices went vertical, and now the neighborhood's biggest fight is a preservation group taking rooftop extensions to court. That's not a scene, that's an estate. It came second on pure quality. It'll never be first, because nothing here is going to surprise you again.

03

Regentessekwartier

Locals just call it de Regentes. Weimarstraat runs a full 1.5 kilometers and carries the whole district: Pompernikkel for sourdough, Bogor doing Indonesian since the 1960s, Bar Bowie on the newer end, a theater in a former bathhouse. Two-thirds of homes are rentals and prices sit below the city average, which is why first-time buyers and creatives keep landing here. Watch the Energiekwartier, 450 new homes rising around the old electricity factory at the south end. If the new money mixes instead of replaces, this takes the top spot within a decade.

04

Hofkwartier

The old core around Noordeinde, where the king keeps his working palace and the goldsmiths and tailors have been in the walls for generations. The bar scene is genuinely good, and specific: two cocktail bars inside actual bank vaults, Goldbar at Hotel Indigo and the Ultramarijnbar at voco. Add the Venduehuis auction house and the galleries and you have real character. But it's built for visitors, and locals are the second audience here. It's been expensive and curated for decades, and it isn't changing. Great afternoon. Not a neighborhood you live in.

No juries, no sponsors. How we pick explains the rules; Zeeheldenkwartier is where they landed.

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