Napoleon ordered Antwerp’s first dock here in 1811. The old dock district now holds the MAS, the Red Star Line sheds, the city archive and a two-star restaurant in a warehouse of 1895.
Tag: Cornelis Floris de Vriendt
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.
Antwerp’s Grote Markt, where the town hall turned to face its square
Antwerp’s Grote Markt was given to the city in 1220. Its town hall dates from the 1560s, its Brabo fountain from 1887, and most of its guildhalls are younger than they look.
Havenhuis: Zaha Hadid’s glass ship on a 1922 fire station
The Port of Antwerp-Bruges keeps about 500 staff in a 105-metre glass volume that Zaha Hadid set on top of a 1922 fire station. It opened in September 2016, six months after her death.
The MAS in Antwerp stacks its history ten boxes high
The Museum aan de Stroom opened on the Eilandje in 2011: a 60-metre tower of red Indian sandstone holding more than 600,000 objects. Its best part costs nothing.