Harry Rutten, a Dutch former shipowner, opened Museum De Reede on the Ernest Van Dijckkaai in 2017. It shows nothing but prints, and gives Goya, Rops and Munch a room each.
Author: Emma
Our podcaster-in-chief, Emma, has lived in Antwerp for over a decade and knows the city inside and out. With her finger on the pulse of Antwerp’s cultural scene, she’s the one to turn to for the latest happenings.
The University of Antwerp, at home in a mayor’s house of 1516
Antwerp’s university has existed in its present form only since 2003, and now has 24,827 students. Its roots go back to a Jesuit school of 1852, and its city campus to a mayor’s palace of 1516.
Antwerp’s beguinage, behind the wall on Rodestraat
Beguines have lived on a triangle of land off Rodestraat since 1545. The last of them died in 1986; the forty houses are still lived in.
Rivierenhof, the Deurne estate the province bought for everyone in 1921
The Province of Antwerp bought the Rivierenhof in 1921 to keep the houses out. A century on, the 132-hectare park in Deurne draws more than a million visitors a year and still charges none of them.
Deurne: an airport, a park and a castle for sale
Deurne, Antwerp’s second-largest district with 85,283 inhabitants, has the city’s airport, its largest park and the Bosuil, and a castle the province tried to sell.
The Bourla, Antwerp’s 1834 theatre, keeps its ropes and pulleys
Antwerp’s Bourla theatre opened in 1834 and still holds its original wooden stage machinery. The €98m renovation that will keep it has been pushed back to after the summer of 2027.
Park Spoor Noord turned a rail yard into Antwerp-Noord’s garden
A 24-hectare railway yard divided three districts of Antwerp-Noord for more than a century. Since 2008, 18 hectares of it have been a park, with barbecues for streets where one home in eight had outdoor space.
The Seefhoek, the Antwerp district named after a beer
The Seefhoek in Antwerp-Noord took its name from a cloudy beer drunk on a street corner after 1863. Its statistical district now houses 18,709 people at almost six times the city’s density.
Brabo threw the hand, but Antwerp’s name probably came from a riverbank
Legend says Silvius Brabo cut off a giant’s hand, threw it in the Scheldt and gave Antwerp its name. The fountain on the Grote Markt dates from 1887; the name is a good deal older.
The Sinksenfoor, Antwerp’s Pentecost fair, and the move that worked
The Sinksenfoor opens on Pentecost weekend with about 150 stalls on Spoor Oost in Borgerhout. It moved there from the Zuid in 2015, after three years of court cases.