Amsterdam Centraal Station

Pierre Cuypers designed both the Rijksmuseum and this train station, and the two buildings bookend Amsterdam like a pair of elaborate bookends. Centraal Station opened in 1889, just four years after the Rijksmuseum, and the family resemblance is obvious: Gothic arches, Renaissance details, towers, and an absurd amount of decorative brickwork. The station was controversial from day one because it was built right on the waterfront, permanently cutting the city off from the IJ lake that had been Amsterdam's connection to the sea for centuries.

The engineering was as ambitious as the architecture. The station sits on three interconnected artificial islands created in the IJ, built with sand dredged from dunes near Velsen. Like everything in Amsterdam, it stands on wooden piles — 8,687 of them, driven through unstable soil. Construction was repeatedly delayed because the ground kept shifting. The front facade features Amsterdam's coat of arms flanked by those of fourteen European trading cities connected to Amsterdam by rail, which was a very Dutch way of saying "we're still the center of everything."

The station has the second longest railway platform in the Netherlands at 695 meters, and it handles roughly 190,000 passengers daily. But it's more than a transport hub — it's Amsterdam's front door. Most visitors' first glimpse of the city is walking out of Centraal Station and seeing the canal-lined streets fanning out before them.

Around the back, the free ferries to Amsterdam-Noord depart every few minutes, connecting the old city to the rapidly developing north bank. Cuypers never imagined that side of the building would matter, but today it's one of the busiest crossings in the city.