Portal:Netherlands
Wikimedia portal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Welcome to the Netherlands Portal
Welkom bij het Nederlandportaal!
The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Netherlands consists of twelve provinces and three overseas special municipalities. European Netherlands has land borders with Germany to the east and with Belgium to the south, and a coastline to the north and west. It shares maritime borders with the United Kingdom, Germany, and Belgium in the North Sea. The official language is Dutch, with West Frisian as a secondary official language in the province of Friesland. Dutch, English, and Papiamento are official in the Caribbean territories. People from the Netherlands are referred to as Dutch.
The Netherlands has been a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a unitary structure since 1848. The country has a tradition of pillarisation (separation of citizens into groups by religion and political beliefs) and a long record of social tolerance, having legalised prostitution and euthanasia, along with maintaining a liberal drug policy. The Netherlands allowed women's suffrage in 1919 and was the first country to legalise same-sex marriage in 2001. A developed country, its mixed-market advanced economy is the eighteenth-largest in the world, and has the eleventh-highest per capita income globally. The Hague holds the seat of the States General, cabinet, and Supreme Court. The Port of Rotterdam is the busiest in Europe. Schiphol is the busiest airport in the Netherlands, and the fourth busiest in Europe. The Netherlands is a founding member of the European Union, eurozone, G10, NATO, OECD, and World Trade Organization, as well as a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. It hosts intergovernmental organisations and international courts, many of which are in The Hague. (Full article...)
Selected biography
Did you know (auto-generated)

- ... that Dutch Maid Bakery in Tennessee has survived fire, war, the Great Depression, and the rebranding of its fruitcake?
- ... that HMS Trent helped keep the Dutch in port by sending bogus signals to a non-existent fleet?
- ... that the works of both Dutch and indigenous Indonesian artists have been classified as Mooi Indië?
- ... that Dutch agriculturist Hermanus Johannes Lovink used a suitcase gramophone during his lectures?
- ... that Dutch East India Company officials considered the inhabitants of the Bungku Kingdom to be "the fiercest of all Malukan peoples"?
- ... that Femke is the most common feminine given name of West Frisian origin in the Netherlands?
Categories
Related portals
Featured content
Extended content | ||
|---|---|---|
|
This page gives an overview of all featured content ( Featured articles
Featured lists
|
Things you can do
Wikiprojects
| You are invited to participate in the WikiProject Netherlands, a WikiProject dedicated to developing and improving articles about the Netherlands. |














