A hedge-town that became the world's court capital
The Hague—Den Haag, historically 's-Gravenhage—is South Holland's capital and the Netherlands' third-largest city with over half a million residents. Greater Hague holds more than 800,000; the Rotterdam–Hague metro approaches 2.7 million.
The name comes from Middle Dutch hage, a hedge, enclosure or hunting ground, first recorded in 1242; the longer 's-Gravenhage, the count's enclosure, appears in 1347, the count being Holland's. The city officially adopted the short form in 1990, though the post office still prefers the long one. Long before, the area lay inside Roman Germania Inferior near the frontier; four milestones dug up at Wateringse Veld in 1997 measure distances to Forum Hadriani, modern Voorburg, and date from Antoninus Pius to Decius.
Its origins are hazy. Count Floris IV apparently bought a court beside today's Hofvijver pond in 1229, planning a castle, but died in a tournament in 1234. The settlement around the Binnenhof became the counts' main residence in 1358 and grew to city size without ever getting city rights. Burgundian rule from 1432 made it secondary to Brussels and Mechelen. Having no walls proved disastrous in the Eighty Years' War, when Spanish troops walked in, and in 1575 the States of Holland even weighed razing the place until William the Silent intervened. From 1588 it hosted the States of Holland and the States General, yet it stayed technically a village so the government could keep control; Louis Bonaparte finally granted city rights in 1806.
When Belgium and the Netherlands were briefly united, Brussels and Amsterdam alternated as capital while government sat in The Hague, an arrangement that survived Belgium's 1830 split: Amsterdam is the official capital, but the Cabinet, parliament, Supreme Court and Council of State are here, as are the king's palaces and most embassies. The Second World War was brutal: many Jews were murdered, the Atlantic Wall cut through the city, and on 3 March 1945 an RAF raid aimed at V-2 launchers mistakenly hit the Bezuidenhout district, killing 511 people.
Today the city is a world centre of international law, home to the UN's International Court of Justice, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the separate International Criminal Court, the chemical weapons watchdog OPCW, Europol and around 200 other bodies. Shell has major offices here, and the seaside resort of Scheveningen lies on its coast.
Source: The Hague
