Lijnbaan

The Lijnbaan is a long, narrow pedestrian strip lined with low, flat-roofed shops. When it opened in nineteen fifty-three, it was the first car-free shopping street in Europe. City planners designed it to replace the dense, bombed-out streets of Rotterdam with an open, airy flow of storefronts. It felt so radical at the time that the actress Audrey Hepburn visited to cut the ribbon. Architects still come here to see how planners prioritized foot traffic over the automobile decades before it became common.