Michiel Thys and Kenny Aernouts opened Vitrin on Marnixplaats, in Antwerp’s Zuid district, in 2011. The name is Dutch for shop window, and it sets the terms: this is a place for watching the square, not for hiding from it. Fifteen years later the bar at number 14 still opens every day, still pours the spritz it became known for and still has the square as its main attraction.
That is a sensible business plan, because Marnixplaats is one of the better-designed squares in the city. It is round, it has a monument in the middle and its streets run off it in every direction, which means people cross it on their way to somewhere else and some of them stop.
A square built on a fortress
The Zuid did not grow; it was drawn. The Spanish citadel that guarded Antwerp’s southern edge for three centuries came down from 1874, and a royal decree fixed the new street plan in 1875. At the same time the city dug the Zuiderdokken, the southern docks, and over the next 25 years filled the district with the buildings that still define it: the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in 1890, a synagogue in 1893, a biscuit factory in 1894, a station in 1898. The long straight avenues meeting at round squares earned the area the nickname Le Petit Paris, and the Haussmann comparison is fair: Marnixplaats is a small Antwerp version of a Parisian rond-point.
The square is named after Philips of Marnix, lord of Sint-Aldegonde, who was mayor of Antwerp during the Spanish siege of 1584 and 1585. The monument in the middle, Schelde Vrij, celebrates a later and happier date: the 1863 agreement with the Netherlands that ended the Dutch toll on ships sailing up the Scheldt. Jan Jacob Winders designed it; Neptune and Mercury stand on top, about 20 metres up. The message to anyone ordering a drink below is that this part of the city exists because the river was opened and the fortress was removed.
The district has had its slow decades too. The Zuid station closed in 1965 and was demolished, the southern docks were filled in and turned into car parks in 1968 and 1969, and in the quiet years between 1966 and 1976 the district’s best-known address was Anny De Decker’s Wide White Space gallery. The revival came in stages, from the Zuiderpershuis arts centre in 1987 to the Palace of Justice on the old station site in 2007. Vitrin arrived late in that story, in 2011.
What is poured
The day at Vitrin runs on a simple timetable: breakfast in the morning, soup, salads and sandwiches at lunch, pints and cocktails after work, seven days a week. A coffee was listed at €2.40 and a latte at €3, café prices rather than specialty-bar prices. The house drink is the spritz, made with cava instead of prosecco, Aperol and a slice of orange.
Vitrin is a bar that serves coffee, not a coffee bar, and it is better for knowing the difference. Earlier write-ups, the first version of this one included, described it as a temple of single-origin espresso with poetry readings. Its own website sells it as a place for after-work drinks, promising cappuccinos, homemade soup and beer, in that order, with free wifi, bicycle parking outside and payment by card or Payconiq. That is the honest version, and a better one.
The bar is also working on a beer of its own. Vitsi Export is a blond of 5.6 per cent, brewed by Brouwerij The Musketeers and late-hopped with Saaz, the Czech hop that gives pilsners their spice. The owners describe it as fresh and slightly bitter, drinkable as easily as an export lager but with a little more character. An export beer for a square built to celebrate free trade on the river is either a coincidence or the best joke in the Zuid.
Upstairs and outside
Above the bar is First Floor Vitrin, a 100 square-metre studio with white wooden floors, a separate office and a large north-facing window. It is rented out for board meetings, brainstorms, presentations and showroom events, with prices on request through Saskia Van Gils of The Maverick. For a café that lives off its windows, it is a neat idea: the floor above is sold on the same light.
Outside, the competition is close. Five other bars sit within 160 metres, from Soho at number 6 to Bistro The Muze on the Volkstraat. Vitrin has held its corner against all of them since 2011, which in a district that has reinvented itself several times since 1875 counts as a strategy.
The house beer is still being announced. The spritz is still orange.
Vitrin
- Address: Marnixplaats 14, 2000 Antwerp
- Opened: 2011
- Who runs it: Michiel Thys and Kenny Aernouts
- Hours: Daily, from 10:00 to midnight
- Price: Coffee €2.40, latte €3
- Upstairs: First Floor Vitrin, a 100 m² studio for meetings and events, prices on request
- Getting there: Tram 4, stop Museum; trams 1 and 10, stop Bres
- Why it works: it knows it is a bar, and the square is the view
