The European part of the Netherlands is located in Northwestern Europe, bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Germany to the east, and Belgium to the south. The country's geography is fundamentally defined by its low elevation and its major river delta, formed by the confluence of the Rhine, the Meuse (Maas), and the Scheldt rivers as they empty into the North Sea.
The landscape is famously flat, dominated by polders—tracts of land enclosed by dikes that were reclaimed from the sea or from lakes. A massive inland bay, the Zuiderzee, was closed off in 1932 by the Afsluitdijk (Enclosure Dam), creating the freshwater IJsselmeer and allowing for the creation of the province of Flevoland, entirely reclaimed from the water.
While the Netherlands is primarily a mainland European country, the Kingdom also includes territories in the Caribbean. Three constituent countries (Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten) and three special municipalities (Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba) offer a distinctly different geography of tropical climates, volcanic hills, and coral reefs.
