Fenix opened on 16 May 2025, with Queen Máxima as a guest of honour. It is an international art museum devoted to migration, the first of its kind in the Netherlands, and it tells stories about love, farewells, homesickness and joy through the eyes of artists. It is also reason enough on its own for a day in Rotterdam, and one of the better day trips from Amsterdam if you have an afternoon to spare.
The location of this museum couldn’t be more fitting: Fenix is hosted in a former warehouse right on the docks of the city, from where millions of migrants departed in the 19th and 20th centuries to America and Canada. While the Europeans departed from here, others arrived on the same docks to make Rotterdam, or Europe, their home. The renovation and transformation of this warehouse into a museum is the centrepiece of the regeneration of the Katendrecht neighbourhood, which was home to Rotterdam’s red-light district and the oldest Chinatown of continental Europe.
This area of Rotterdam, where the New York Hotel is also located (the hotel where people would stay right before their departure – the rich ones, because the poor were hosted in a different place), has fascinated me since I first visited. It’s like all the emotions of the people leaving and arriving here years ago are still lingering around the docks. I always get goosebumps when I walk in the area. I think of all the lives that were about to change dramatically, with this place as a starting point. Maybe even some of my relatives stood once here, heading to what they were hoping to be a better life.
Rotterdam still defines itself as a city of migration, with over 170 nationalities living here. People are still arriving in Rotterdam, while others leave. Migration is a timeless subject. We, as a species, have continuously travelled around the globe, always searching for something – be it a better or a more interesting life, better climate, more adventure, more survival chances. Since the dawn of time, it was a subject that brought changes and also conflict. And while today it’s easier for many people to move countries and continents, for others it is still a life-threatening decision, a risk they have to take if they want, or hope for, a better life.
A warehouse built for departures
The space is enormous, and you notice it the moment you walk in (you can tell you’re not in Amsterdam anymore). The building went up in 1923 as the San Francisco Warehouse, designed by Cornelis Nicolaas van Goor, and it was part of what was then the largest transshipment warehouse in the world. It stored and shipped goods for the Holland America Line, the Dutch cargo and passenger company founded in Rotterdam in 1873, which ran steamships between the Netherlands and America and carried millions of emigrants across the Atlantic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The warehouse was destroyed during the Second World War. Reconstruction started in 1950, when it was split into two, and the museum is now housed in Fenix Warehouse II. The renovation gave it, among other things, a green roof.
A museum that addresses migration was long overdue in the Netherlands, in my opinion, so I was glad to hear about this news and very excited to see it as soon as it opened.
“What we aim to tell is a human story. What we really want to show with Fenix, what we are showing with our collection, with the stories from our artists, is that migration is timeless and universal, and, above all, migration is about people,” says Hanneke Mantel, Head of Exhibitions and Collection at Fenix.
What you’ll see at Fenix
Fenix opened with three exhibitions, and all three are still on.
The Family of Migrants
A collection of 194 photographs from 55 countries taken by 136 photographers. The inspiration for this exhibition was Edward Steichen’s Family of Man, which was first shown at MoMA in 1955. You’ll see here photos from 1905 to the present, telling stories of love, history, tragedy.
All Directions
This showcases over 150 artworks and objects ranging from the historical to the contemporary, drawn from the Fenix collection and acquired over the past five years. The artists featured are from across the globe. It’s enriched by personal mementos, gathered from the people of Rotterdam and telling individual stories of migration, alongside important historical artefacts such as a section of the Berlin Wall, a migrant boat from Lampedusa and a Nansen passport from 1923, an internationally recognised travel document that was issued to stateless refugees after World War I. It is a changing collection presentation, so the works on show rotate. If you went in the first months, there will be things you haven’t seen.
The Suitcase Labyrinth
An interactive installation made up of 2,000 donated suitcases that brings to life a collection of personal histories from countries, cultures and communities from around the world. While you walk around the rows of suitcases, you have to look for the ones with a yellow tag and point your listening device at them to hear the story of that suitcase. To collect all these, the museum put up newspaper advertisements, and many people came forward to donate suitcases that were in some cases handed down from generation to generation. This struck me as a particularly emotional part of the museum. Most of my life revolved around suitcases and travel to different places, and it still does. A suitcase carries not only the physical baggage that we move from one place to the other, but also the emotional load. I found myself spending too much time in this part of the exhibition, wandering through the labyrinth and discovering suitcases, and where there was no yellow tag, I could still imagine some of their stories.
The Tornado
It’s a good thing that after visiting the Suitcase Labyrinth I went up the Tornado, the centrepiece of the museum, a double helix staircase leading up to the roof, where, along with the fresh air, you get beautiful views over the docks, the river and the surrounding area. The Tornado, designed by Chinese architect Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, represents our journeys through the world, with all the twists and turns, the different directions that you can take, that lead to various results. The structure is 30 metres high, and clad in 297 stainless-steel panels that were made in Groningen (each panel took over 100 hours of polishing). It is also MAD Architects’ first cultural project in Europe.
Fenix, one year on
In its first twelve months Fenix drew more than half a million visitors, from over a hundred countries, and they rated it an average of nine out of ten. The museum expected less.
This autumn it opens a new hall of 650 square metres on the ground floor, built for large temporary exhibitions, which is a real change of gear. Until now the programme has been the three opening shows and the rotating collection. From this autumn there is room for a proper international exhibition programme alongside them.
The first one is by Slavs and Tatars, a collective who have spent twenty years mapping the regions between the former Berlin Wall, Central Asia and the Great Wall of China. They work with humour, and they are interested in how porous borders actually are: food, myths and language cross them without asking. They have shown at MoMA, Tate Modern and the Venice Biennale, but this will be their first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. It opens on 19 November 2026.
Visiting Fenix: tickets, hours and how to get there
Fenix is at Paul Nijghkade 5, on the Katendrecht peninsula. You can get there by public transport, bike, shared scooter or car, but the water taxi across the Maas is the nicest way to arrive, and it suits the subject.
Tickets are €15 for anyone 26 and over, €7.50 for 18 to 25, and free for under-18s. Every ticket has a start time, so you have to book a slot online in advance, and that applies even if you have a discount card. The Rotterdampas and the ICOM card are accepted. The Museumkaart is not, and neither is the VriendenLoterij VIP card. This catches out a lot of Dutch visitors who turn up assuming they are covered. Fenix says it will announce it if that changes.
The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed on Mondays except during central-region school holidays, and open on national holidays. Your ticket covers the exhibitions, the Tornado and the Espresso Bar on the first floor. Allow around 90 minutes for the two, more if you sit down somewhere.
Plein, the covered indoor city square, is free to walk into, and so are the Fenix Shop and the O Anatolian Café & Bakery in the entrance hall. Plein has toilets, wifi and a kiosk with international newspapers and games, and you are allowed to bring your own lunch. It stays open until 8 p.m. from Tuesday to Friday, and until 5 p.m. at weekends.
One small thing worth knowing: the Tornado stays open in ordinary rain, and closes only in heavy rain, strong wind, storm, snow, ice or lightning. Dutch weather being what it is, don’t write it off because the morning looks grim.
More on the Fenix museum’s website.
Fenix is funded by the Droom en Daad Foundation, which is helping redefine Rotterdam for the 21st century – developing new kinds of arts and culture institutions.
I hope many people will go there and open their mind to the stories being told, and, when they leave, they will think a bit differently about all the migrants that surround them in their everyday life. I wrote that the week Fenix opened, and it was only a hope. Half a million visitors later, I’d like to think some of it is happening.
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