Rotterdam Street Art and Graffiti: Routes, Map and Murals

Rotterdam’s street art is mapped, free to follow and organised into walking routes by neighbourhood, and the tool to use is Rewriters010’s website rather than an app. Rewriters is the Rotterdam collective that supports street artists, opens legal walls and keeps the city’s mural map, and it currently lists 247 artworks, 12 artists and 9 routes across the city.

Rotterdam has an unusual amount of paintable wall, for a blunt reason: the centre was destroyed in 1940 and rebuilt in a way that left huge exposed gable ends and industrial facades. What follows is how to find the work, which routes to pick, and how to tell a mural that is still there from one that has been demolished.

The Rewriters010 street art map

The Rewriters010 map is the practical answer to “where is the street art in Rotterdam”, and it is free. The Rewriters app that older guides recommend is gone: it has been withdrawn from both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store, and both listings now return an error. What replaced it is better, because a website costs nothing and updates the moment a wall changes.

The map lives at rewriters010.nl and works in Dutch, English, French and Spanish. Each artwork has its own entry with the artist, the location and the story behind it, and the site also keeps a running news feed of new murals going up and old ones coming down. That last part matters more than it sounds: Rotterdam street art is temporary by design, and the site recorded a Batavierenstraat mural disappearing after two years while I was checking it.

Artists get their own profiles, which turns a walk into something more than photographing walls. You can also filter routes by how far you want to walk and how long you want to be out.

The 9 Rewriters routes

Rewriters currently publishes 9 routes, each covering one part of the city, and the table below gives them with their artwork counts as listed in September 2026.

The site filters these by distance, in bands up to 5 km (3.1 mi), 10 km (6.2 mi) and 15 km (9.3 mi) and longer, and by duration, in bands up to 30 minutes, 45 minutes and an hour and longer. That is the useful part if you have a fixed amount of afternoon.

Start with a Centrum route if you have half a day and with Southside or Feijenoord if you have a full one. The two Centrum routes hold 63 works between them within walking distance of Rotterdam Centraal, which is the tightest concentration on the map.

What walking a route is actually like

Walking a Rewriters route is a way of seeing Rotterdam’s ordinary neighbourhoods rather than a gallery visit, and that is the argument for doing it. I spent a few hours on the south-west of the city, where the works cluster tightly, and the murals were about half of what I got out of the afternoon.

You are moving between residential streets at your own pace, so you can turn down anything that looks interesting, stop for a coffee or go into a shop, and pick the route back up where you left it. Walking the whole city would take the best part of a day.

Not everything painted in Rotterdam is on the map. Rewriters lists what it considers the highlights and flags other pieces separately, so there is a second tier to look at once you have done the main ones.

Where to find street art in Rotterdam

Rotterdam’s street art concentrates in six areas, and the list below runs from the easiest to reach to the ones worth a tram ride.

1. Centrum and Centrum West. The densest concentration, 63 works across two routes, all within walking distance of Rotterdam Centraal. This is where to start.
2. Delfshaven and the M4H district. The old harbour area west of the centre, where the ALL CAPS project has painted industrial walls at a scale the centre cannot match.
3. Feijenoord. South of the Maas, with 31 works from the 2021 to 2023 ALL CAPS seasons. Cross on the Erasmus Bridge and make an afternoon of it.
4. Charlois and Lombardijen. The Southside route, 18 works, and the part of Rotterdam that feels least like a city centre.
5. Crooswijk and Noord. 18 works in a residential neighbourhood north-east of the centre.
6. Beverwaard. Two ALL CAPS seasons, 2024 and 2025, and 21 works between them. The furthest out of the six.

Where to stay in Rotterdam

Stay in or just west of the centre, because both Centrum routes start there and the tram network makes the outer neighbourhoods easy from it.

I spent two nights at Hostel ROOM Rotterdam, at Van Vollenhovenstraat 62, in a private Clocktower room with a balcony and an ensuite bathroom, which is not what most people picture when they hear hostel. The entrance is metres from the tram 7 stop, a few minutes from tram 8, and about 10 minutes’ walk from metro lines D and E, on a quiet street.

Check prices and availability at Hostel ROOM.

For more of the city, our guide to a weekend in Rotterdam covers the rest, and our list of Rotterdam restaurants covers where to eat between murals.

How to get to Rotterdam

Rotterdam Centraal is on the Dutch high-speed line and both Centrum street art routes start within walking distance of it, which makes arriving by train the obvious choice.

From abroad, Eurostar serves Rotterdam Centraal from Brussels and Paris, and London services call there too, though calling patterns change, so check before you book. If you fly, Amsterdam Schiphol has a direct train to Rotterdam Centraal in about 25 minutes, and Rotterdam The Hague Airport is closer but has far fewer routes.

You can compare train and coach fares across operators in a single search, which is worth doing because advance fares on the international routes move a long way.

Rotterdam street art FAQ

Is there a street art map of Rotterdam?

Rewriters010 publishes a free street art map of Rotterdam at rewriters010.nl, covering 247 artworks across 9 neighbourhood routes, in Dutch, English, French and Spanish. Each artwork has the artist, the location and its story, and the site records murals that have been painted over or demolished.

Is the Rotterdam street art app still available?

The Rewriters street art app has been withdrawn. Both the Google Play and Apple App Store listings now return errors. The collective replaced it with a free website, which is more up to date than the app ever was and needs no download.

Where is the best street art in Rotterdam?

Centrum and Centrum West hold the most, 63 works across two routes, all within walking distance of Rotterdam Centraal. Delfshaven’s M4H harbour district has the largest-scale pieces, and Feijenoord south of the Maas has 31 works from three seasons of the ALL CAPS project.

Is Rotterdam street art free to see?

All of it is free. The murals are on public walls, the Rewriters map and routes cost nothing, and the only thing you might pay for is a guided tour, which Rewriters also arranges through its education and tours programme.

How long does a Rotterdam street art route take?

Rewriters filters its routes by duration, in bands of up to 30 minutes, up to 45 minutes, up to an hour and longer, and by distance up to 5 km, 10 km, 15 km and beyond. A Centrum route is a half-day with stops; walking the whole city would take most of a day.

Why does Rotterdam have so much street art?

Rotterdam’s centre was destroyed in 1940 and rebuilt with large blank gable ends and industrial walls, which gave the city an unusual amount of paintable surface. Rewriters has since worked with the city to open legal walls, so a significant share of the work is commissioned rather than illicit.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

The 4 tips below come from walking the south-west of Rotterdam with the Rewriters guide and from re-checking the tools in September 2026.

1. Do not download the app. It no longer exists. Both store listings return errors. Go to rewriters010.nl in a browser instead, which is free, covers 247 works and is updated when walls change, which the app was not.
2. Filter the routes by duration before you pick one. The site lets you ask for up to 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour or longer, which is a far better way to choose than by neighbourhood if you have a train to catch.
3. Check the news feed before you set out for a specific mural. Rotterdam street art is temporary and Rewriters posts when a piece comes down. A mural in the Batavierenstraat went after two years, and the only place that was recorded was the site’s updates page.
4. Two Centrum routes hold 63 works between them. If you only have half a day and you arrive at Rotterdam Centraal, do Centrum and Centrum West and skip the crossing to the south bank entirely.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the first-hand notes here come from the afternoon she spent walking the south-west of Rotterdam following the Rewriters street art route. That trip was made at the invitation of Rotterdam Tourism; what she did and what she wrote were entirely her own. The team covers the Netherlands for independent travellers, including the hostels, restaurants, routes and rail fares worth knowing, and updates this page when routes, tools and murals change.