For over eight centuries, from 980–1795, a large swath of what is now Belgium was ruled from Liège by a succession of Prince-Bishops (Princes-Évêques), who as the name implies were both the secular and the religious rulers. Separation of church and state was a concept whose time had not yet Read More …
This ‘Museum on the River’ in Antwerp was opened in 2010 after fifteen years of preparation and construction. I don’t know how much it cost or how controversial it was or is, but I was surprised to find that it is strikingly beautiful and evidently quite popular with locals and Read More …
This imposing train station was built from 1895 to 1905 as a terminus station, meaning that all the tracks ended here. The station features a huge dome, which aside from being impressive had the function of collecting the steam from the steam engines that were used at the time, thus Read More …
Most of you are too young to remember this, but in the early years of the twenty-first century there used to be establishments in most cities known as internet cafés or cybercafés. These were places with booths and computers, where tourists and other people who didn’t have their own internet Read More …
More than four thousand red and white Velo-Antwerpen bikes are available for spontaneous short-term rentals at over three hundred docking stations throughout the city of Antwerp. They are intended for short trips around town. To use the Velo-Antwerpen system, I registered online at their website for a one-day pass, using Read More …
The Maagdenhuis in Antwerp was a home for orphaned or abandoned girls from the 16th to the 19th century. The name comes from the Dutch word Maegdekens, meaning girls (similar to the German word Mädchen). Today this historic building serves mainly as an art museum, but it also shows a Read More …
This small but attractive museum is named after the Antwerp art collector Fritz Mayer van den Bergh (1858-1901) and features many of the works of art that he collected in the late nineteenth century. What surprised me about Mayer van den Bergh, when I read about him in the museum’s Read More …
For many years in the seventeenth century, this house in the center of Antwerp was the residence and workplace of the Flemish painter and diplomat Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). In 1631 Rubens hosted a prominent visitor here at his home, namely Marie de’ Medici, the widow of the assassinated King Read More …
The two largest cities in Flanders, Antwerp and Ghent, had separate opera companies until 1981, when the two companies were merged to form the Flemish Opera — now known as Opera Ballet Vlaanderen (obv) to emphasize the importance of ballet as well as opera in their programming. The combined company Read More …
For two-thirds of the year, from March to October, an open-air book market is held on the third Sunday of every month from 10 am to 5 pm at the De Coninckplein, a triangular-shaped square about two long blocks north of the central railway station in Antwerp. Of course most Read More …