The Hague, Netherlands

The Hague is a city of roughly 555,000 residents on the North Sea coast of the Netherlands that serves as the seat of the Dutch government and the royal residence, even though it is not the constitutional capital. The 1280 Binnenhof houses the States General parliament and the office of the Prime Minister, while the 1640 Mauritshuis museum holds Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson. The city also hosts the International Court of Justice in the 1913 Peace Palace and the International Criminal Court, established in 2002. The 1891 Panorama Mesdag ranks among the largest surviving 19th-century cylindrical panoramas, and the reasons behind that unusual distinction reach deeper into the city's past.