DIVA opened on Suikerrui in 2018 with six rooms and a butler. Since its 2023 renovation, the museum of diamonds, jewellery and silver also asks where the stones come from.
Category: 🏛️ Museums
Explore the best museums in Antwerp with our guide to the rich history and culture. From art to fashion, there’s no shortage of fascinating exhibitions to see.
Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp: the KMSKA’s museum within a museum
The KMSKA reopened in 2022 after eleven years and more than €100 million. KAAN Architecten built a second museum inside the 1890 palace, and more than 570,000 people came in 2025.
Middelheim Museum: 75 years of free sculpture in an Antwerp park
Antwerp’s open-air sculpture museum began with 167 sculptures in Middelheim park in 1950. Seventy-five years on it holds about 440, across some 30 hectares, and still charges nothing.
Museum De Reede: Goya, Rops and Munch on the Scheldt quay
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.
Museum Mayer van den Bergh closes its house until 2029
Antwerp’s museum of one man’s collection shut on 27 April 2025 for a renovation that reunites it with his childhood home. Dulle Griet has moved a few doors down Lange Gasthuisstraat.
The Rubens House shuts its doors and opens a new one on Hopland
Rubens’s house on the Wapper is closed until 2030 at the earliest. Since August 2024 the visit starts in a new building at Hopland 13, with a garden of 22,000 plants and a library of 100,000 publications.
Museum Plantin-Moretus: 450 years of printing on the Vrijdagmarkt
Christophe Plantin moved his presses to the Vrijdagmarkt in 1576, and the city bought the whole firm in 1876. Closed for renovation since August, the museum reopens on 5 December 2026.
MoMu fashion museum Antwerp gives the Six their first retrospective
MoMu opened in a former hotel on Nationalestraat in 2002 and now holds more than 38,000 objects. Its exhibition The Antwerp Six, the first on the six designers together, runs until 17 January 2027.
Chocolate Nation, opposite Centraal: a million visitors and no subsidy
Chocolate Nation opened opposite Antwerp’s Centraal station in 2019, cost €11.5 million of private money and passed one million visitors in October 2025.
The Red Star Line Museum keeps Antwerp’s emigrant sheds open
About two million emigrants passed through the Red Star Line’s sheds on Antwerp’s Rijnkaai between 1873 and 1934. Since 2013 the same buildings have held the museum that tells their story, from Einstein’s resignation letter to Irving Berlin’s piano.