Rotterdam City Archive houses the public memory of Rotterdam. Through our reading room and online collections roughly 700 years of the city and regions history is available to visitors. These collections include thousands of prints, photos, maps, films and audio recordings. The City Archive also contains 20 kilometres of paper archives, with more digital and digitised material contained in our e-depot (digital repository).
Our holdings
Rotterdam City Archive also preserves the records of Rotterdam City Council (Gemeente Rotterdam). In addition house the archives of local government from regional councils that do not currently have their own archival institutions (e.g. Lansingerland, Albrandswaard, Ridderkerk and Barendrecht). A number of public institutions related to Rotterdam (The Environmental Agency DCMR, The Recreation Authority and the Hollandse Delta Waterboard). The archive also holds private archives from businesses, societies, associations, churches and other social initiatives from Rotterdam and region.
Browse our online collections and archives by using the search bar below the menu, or the translated search forms via this page. Please be aware that while the search function is in English, all content and descriptions given of the records are in Dutch. The Google translate function available at the bottom of the page can be used to read the FAQ's and information pages on this website. This function also works in the search results pages, so it is best to turn Google translation off when reading the search results.
If you need assistance in accessing the collections, please contact us via our contact form or phone number.
The genealogical resources available in the Rotterdam City Archive include civil registers, census records and registers of births, marriages and deaths. We also have a unique collection of arrest and release records from the Rotterdam Police archive from the Second World War which may contain useful genealogical information for the period 1940 – 1945.
The archive has extensive collections of Rotterdam and the surrounding region: including photos, prints, illustrations, topographical maps, postcards, posters, films and audio clips. Many of these are freely available to download.
Browse our archives.
The archive holds public notary records from the period 1585 – 1935. A portion of these registers are digitised and searchable online.
The passenger registers of the Holland America Line from the years 1900 – 1940 are available online.
The registers containing the names of businesses, shops, and people from the period 1808 to 1939 are available online.
The opening hours of the Rotterdam City Archive are Monday to Friday from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM.