Today, Rotterdam is best known as the largest port in the world. Around 1800, although the second city in the Dutch Republic, it was still a minor trade centre. A group of its merchants built a standing theatre in 1773, which was sold in 1851 and largely demolished in 1853. The very rich archives of the stock-holders' company, which exploited this theatre, permit us an insight into the patterns of theatre-going in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the record helps test the common conjecture about the decline of the theatre in those decades.