Architecture of the Netherlands

New town halls and storehouses were built, and many new canals were dug out in and around various cities such as Delft, Leiden, and Amsterdam for defense and transport purposes.

[2] The architecture of the first republic in Northern Europe was marked by sobriety and restraint, and was meant to reflect democratic values by quoting extensively from classical antiquity.

In general, architecture in the Low Countries, both in the Counter-Reformation-influenced south and Protestant-dominated north, remained strongly invested in northern Italian Renaissance and Mannerist forms that predated the Roman High Baroque style of Borromini and Bernini.

The major exponents of the mid-17th century, Jacob van Campen and Pieter Post,[3] adopted de Keyser's forms for such eclectic elements as giant-order pilasters, gable roofs, central pediments, and vigorous steeples.

Two of these, Huis ten Bosch and Mauritshuis, are symmetrical blocks with large windows, stripped of ostentatious Baroque flourishes.

Several cross-connections existed between the schools and movements, as can be observed in the work of Willem Dudok; some of his designs have traditionalist features, while others are landmarks of functionalism.

In the (late) 1930s, various modern architects advocated a return to (certain) traditional artistic principles, instead of following a machine aesthetics, among them J.J.P Oud and Sybold van Ravesteyn,[12] although the reverse happened as well, especially in the 1950s-1960s (e.g. J.F.