Things to do
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Grote Markt
Guild houses with gilded figures on their gables around a Renaissance town hall of 1564, and a bronze fountain in the middle showing a Roman soldier throwing a giant's severed hand into the river, which is the story the city takes its name from. Cafes fill the square and the light is best in the morning.
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Het Steen
The oldest building in the city, a river gate of about 1200 that survived when the rest of the castle was cleared in the 1880s to straighten the quay. It has been a prison, a sawmill and a maritime museum. A visitor centre opened in it in 2021 with a walkway over the Scheldt.
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Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen
Reopened in 2022 after eleven years shut, with a white gallery inserted into the courtyards of the old building so the two circuits interlock. It holds the largest group of James Ensor anywhere, along with Van Eyck, Memling, Fouquet and Rubens. Allow longer than expected; the modern rooms are stacked vertically.
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Museum aan de Stroom
Ten storeys of red sandstone and curved glass on the old docks, opened in 2011, stacked like crates with a spiral escalator running up the outside. The collections cover the port, world trade and the city's own history. The roof terrace is free, open until midnight, and is the best view in Antwerp.
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Museum Plantin-Moretus
A printing works that ran in the same family from 1576 to 1876 and was sold to the city complete, with the presses, the type foundry, the business archive and the family's rooms all in place. Two of the oldest surviving printing presses in the world stand here. It was the first museum listed by Unesco in its own right.
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Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal
The largest Gothic church in the Low Countries, begun in 1352, with one tower finished at one hundred and twenty-three metres and the second abandoned at the second storey when money ran out. Four Rubens altarpieces hang inside, including the raising and the descent from the cross, painted for these walls.
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Rubenshuis
The house and studio the painter designed for himself in 1610 after eight years in Italy, half Flemish and half Italian palazzo, with the portico and garden pavilion he drew. It is closed for a major renovation, with a new entrance building due, so check the current state before making the walk.
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Sint-Annatunnel
A pedestrian tunnel of five hundred and seventy-two metres under the Scheldt, opened in 1933, reached by wooden escalators from the same year that are still running and still make the noise. Cyclists push. It surfaces on the left bank at the spot the classic photograph of the skyline is taken from.
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Sint-Pauluskerk
A Dominican church of 1571, Gothic in plan and baroque inside, holding fifty carved confessionals in oak and a series on the mysteries of the rosary with paintings by Rubens, Jordaens and Van Dyck hanging together. A stone calvary garden of the 1730s stands beside it, populated with life-sized figures.
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Station Antwerpen-Centraal
A stone waiting hall under a dome, opened in 1905 and built with Congo money in twenty kinds of marble, behind an iron and glass train shed of one hundred and eighty-six metres. Four track levels were stacked into it from 2007 so trains could run through rather than terminate. It is regularly voted the finest station in the world.
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ZOO Antwerpen
Founded in 1843 beside the railway station, which makes it one of the oldest in the world, and the historic enclosures are listed buildings: an Egyptian temple for the elephants, a Moorish house for the okapi. Modern habitats have replaced most of the cages. It is entered from the station forecourt.