Eighteen years after the first pier burned down, Scheveningen got a second one. Prince Bernhard opened it on the nineteenth of May 1961, slightly further north than its predecessor and built in concrete and steel where the first had been wooden. Four pavilions sit out above the water like a string of islands.
The intention was the same as with the Wandelhoofd, which was to give the resort a reason to walk out over the sea. The twentieth century had other plans. Dutch holidaymakers began flying south, the boulevard slid into decades of decline, and the pier collected leaks, small fires and bankruptcies. It closed, reopened and closed again.
What rescued it was the thing Scheveningen has always been good at, which is putting something improbable above the water and letting people queue for it. A Ferris wheel now turns over the North Sea, a bungee tower stands at the far end, and the structure is busy again.
From out here the village is behind you and the horizon is in front, which is roughly how Scheveningen has arranged itself for seven hundred years.
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