Antwerp

Antwerp Travel Guide

Antwerp today is Europe's second-largest port and has much of the zest often associated with a harbor town. But it also has an outsized influence in a very different realm: that of clothing design. Since the 1980s, Antwerp-trained fashion designers have become renowned for experimental styles paired with time-honored workmanship. Several designers, such as Dries Van Noten and Véronique Branquinho, stay firmly rooted in the city; others have filtered into major European couture houses. On their home turf, you can experience the fascinating mix of tradition and innovation that influences their work.

In its heyday, Antwerp (Antwerpen in Flemish, Anvers in French) played second fiddle only to Paris. Thanks to artists such as Rubens, Van Dyck, and Jordaens, it was one of Europe's leading art centers. Its printing presses produced missals for the farthest reaches of the Spanish empire. It became, and has remained, the diamond capital of the world. Its civic pride was such that the Antwerpen Sinjoren (patricians) considered themselves a cut above just about everybody else. They still do.

Antwerp is often called the City of the Madonnas. On almost every street corner in the old section, you'll see a high niche with a protective statuette of the Virgin. People tend to think that because Belgium is linguistically split it is also religiously divided. This emphatically is not so. In fact, the Roman Catholic faith appears to be stronger and more unquestioning in Flanders than in Wallonia.

Great prosperity came to Antwerp during the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Born in Gent and raised in Mechelen, he made Antwerp the principal port of his vast domain. It became Europe's most important commercial center in the 16th century, as well as a center of the new craft of printing. The Golden Age came to an end with the abdication of Charles V in 1555. He was succeeded by Philip II of Spain, whose ardent Roman Catholicism brought him into immediate conflict with the Protestants of the Netherlands. In 1566, when Calvinist iconoclasts destroyed paintings and sculptures in churches and monasteries, Philip II responded by sending in Spanish troops. In what became known as the Spanish Fury, they sacked the town and killed thousands of citizens.

The decline of Antwerp had already begun when its most illustrious painters, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, and Anthony Van Dyck, reached the peak of their fame. Rubens's tie to the city is a genial, pervasive presence. The artist's house, his church, and the homes of his benefactors, friends, and disciples are all over the old city. His wife also seems to be everywhere, for she frequently posed as the model for his portraits of the Virgin Mary. Rubens and fellow Antwerper Van Dyck both dabbled in diplomacy and were knighted by the English monarch. Jordaens, less widely known, stayed close to Antwerp all his life.

The Treaty of Munster in 1648, which concluded the Thirty Years' War, further weakened Antwerp's position, for the river Scheldt was closed to shipping -- it was not to be active again until 1863, when a treaty obliged the Dutch, who controlled the estuary, to reopen it.

The huge and splendid railway station, built at the close of the 19th century, remains a fitting monument to Antwerp's second age of prosperity, during which it hosted universal expositions in 1885 and 1894. In World War I, Antwerp held off German invaders long enough for the Belgian army to regroup south of the IJzer. In World War II, the Germans trained many V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets on the city, where Allied troops were debarking for the final push.