Antwerp is situated on the Schelde (Scheldt) River, about 55 miles (88 kilometres) from the North Sea. The Schelde, together with the Meuse and the Rhine, forms the biggest estuary in western Europe, and Antwerp is an essential part of an enormous harbour complex, one of the greatest in the world. The harbour installations of Antwerp grew especially after World War II. For many years this expansion took place on the right bank of the Schelde only, but beginning in the 1970s there was much development on the left bank as well.
Because Antwerp lies in the Dutch- (Flemish-) speaking part of Belgium, the city plays the role of unofficial capital of Flanders. Antwerpians generally take this role very seriously, conscious as they are of the great importance of their city in the past and present. The pride and competitive attitude thus exhibited by the residents has led to their being designated by the nickname Sinjoren (from the Spanish señores). Pop. (2007 est.) mun., 466,203.
Antwerp’s site on the right bank of the generally south–north-flowing Schelde is a vast, flat alluvial plain. Since 1923, however, the city’s territory also has included an area on the left bank of the river. Annexation of villages on the right bank north of Antwerp in 1929 and 1958 extended the city’s territory to the Dutch frontier, and further annexation in 1983 of municipalities surrounding the original city added considerably to Antwerp’s area and population. The total area of contemporary Antwerp measures 75 square miles (195 square kilometres), compared with 7 square miles before the beginning of the annexations. Only a part of this territory is completely built up. The extension of the agglomeration is continuing; many outlying villages have already lost their agricultural character and have grown in population as a result of emigration from the city.
Until 1859 Antwerp lay surrounded by its 16th-century fortified walls, which were transformed in the latter half of the 19th century into broad avenues as a larger half circle of fortifications was built. This later encircling belt was replaced after World War II by another system of ring roads, which connect with a network of national and international highways. Several tunnels connect the right bank of the city with the left bank, where considerable residential and industrial development has taken place since World War II. The city centre, however, remains on the right bank; it stretches westward from the Central (railway) Station along the lively artery constituted by the Keyserlei and the Meir into the old city and thence to the terraced right bank of the Schelde.
Eric Carle/Shostal AssociatesThe old city, within the arc once formed by the 16th-century fortifications, has many narrow, winding streets and old buildings. This area contains the Cathedral of Our Lady, begun in the 14th century and restored in the 19th and 20th centuries; it is one of the nation’s finest Gothic buildings. The 19th-century city, with broader and substantially right-angled streets, stretches beyond the old city and merges with some of the suburban extensions annexed in 1983. A third right-bank area spreads beyond the 19th-century fortifications and is characterized by numerous modern buildings.
The largest part of Antwerp, however, is the essentially nonresidential northern seaport complex. Most of the agricultural waterside villages incorporated by the city have been eliminated to make room for expanding, if somewhat bleak, areas of docks, industrial sites, and railway yards. Locks connect this right-bank complex with the tidal Schelde River: the first, the Kattendijk, was opened in 1860; and the 1,640-foot (500-metre) Berendrecht was when it opened in 1988 the largest lock in the world. Left-bank port and industrial facilities have access to the Schelde via the Kallo lock.
The unique flavour of Antwerp is derived from the combination of, and tensions between, the diverse aspects of its personality: a passionate commitment to commerce goes hand in hand with an abiding interest in the life of ideas and in the arts; respect and affection for the past are juxtaposed with a fervent desire to participate fully in the present and in the future; and awareness of being a truly European and cosmopolitan city, with a resulting openness and broad curiosity, coexists with a sense of tradition and of idiosyncratic particularity, which lend an almost provincial charm to life in the city. In its centre a lively social activity is conducted on the streets and in the countless cafés. The Schelde is the veritable heart and soul of Antwerp, the raison d’être not only of Antwerp’s dynamic economic life but also of its sense of identity and of the deep attachment—touchingly expressed in many literary works—that Antwerpians tend to feel for their city.
The residents of Antwerp generally speak the local Brabantian-Antwerp dialect of Dutch. Dutch as spoken in The Netherlands and by Dutch-speaking cultured Belgians, however, is taught in the schools and is gaining ground in economic life. Although French is still much used in commercial and industrial circles, it is losing steadily as a means of expression. This does not mean that Dutch-speaking Antwerpians do not know French or other languages, for the international character of the city implies a readiness of many of its residents to understand foreign languages.
Most of the foreigners living in Antwerp are Dutch, followed by Moroccans, Spaniards, French, and Germans; there are also small numbers of British, Americans, and Israelis. Unlike the other foreigners, the Moroccan and Spanish groups are largely unskilled workers who migrated to Belgium during periods of labour scarcity after World War II. There have been associated social tensions, notably concerning discrimination in housing.
The prevalent religion in Antwerp is Roman Catholicism. There are also small groups of various Protestant churches and a sizable Jewish group of different tendencies. (By the 19th century, Antwerp already had a great number of Jewish residents, but many Jews died in World War II German concentration camps.) A large and growing part of the population is nonreligious.
Antwerp’s economic life has long been closely connected with its existence as a seaport, and as such it is inseparable from the city’s favourable geographic location and from the port’s facilities and functions. In the 16th century the city developed an important sugar-refining industry, in which partially worked sugarcane was brought in by ship, refined, and reexported. The first petroleum refineries were established during the 1920s and ’30s, and they were soon joined by automobile assembly plants. After World War II, industry expanded at a rapid pace. Larger petroleum refineries, closely followed by petrochemical industries, were established, together with chemical plants in the 1960s, and the automotive industry was restructured on a larger scale.
Other important products include photographic and electronic equipment and cut diamonds, the latter for which Antwerp is world-famous. According to legend, the first diamond was cut in Antwerp in 1476. Since the 16th century, cutting and dealing establishments have thrived in the so-called diamond quarter adjacent to the Central Station, and Antwerp has become the international centre of the diamond industry.
Antwerp’s complex of harbour and industrial activities is served by many commercial agencies, commission agents, import and export firms, banking establishments, insurance companies, road-transport enterprises, and railways.
A dense network of railway lines and highways serves Antwerp’s huge port and industrial complex, and the city is a rail and road centre for Belgian and international destinations. Antwerp is also well integrated into Europe’s vast inland waterway network. The airport at Deurne is important for freight and passenger flights. On the local level, public transportation in the city consists of a network of bus lines and tramways; some of the tramways have been transformed into subway lines.
Like all Belgian municipalities, Antwerp is governed by an elected city council, which in turn elects a board of aldermen, headed by a burgomaster, nominated by the king on recommendation of the council. Generally the burgomaster is a member of the elected council, but this is not obligatory. Each alderman has a specified department to manage, but decisions and resolutions are always taken by the board as a whole. Under the board of aldermen is the town clerk, the chief official to whom the different administrative services report. The city is also the residence of the government of the province of Antwerp, headed by a governor appointed by the king; a provincial council, elected every four years; and its board of deputies, who have, in regard to the province, the same task as the city aldermen. The provincial recorder is the counterpart of the town clerk. A third kind of public service is the Commission for Public Relief. The members of the commission are appointed for six years by the city council.
The Commission for Public Relief, responsible for public health and care of the aged and orphans, manages a series of institutions, among which are several large hospitals. Together with these official establishments, there are a number of independent, mostly Roman Catholic, institutions. This duality is also found in education. Besides the different schools of all grades (i.e., kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, and technical institutions) managed by the city administration (and for a small part by the state), there exists an independent, essentially Roman Catholic, network. This is also the case at the university level: both an official (state) and an independent (Jesuit) institute were founded in 1965. Higher artistic training is given in the National Higher Institute and Royal Academy for Fine Arts (1663) and the Royal Flemish Conservatory of Music (1898).
It is significant, in view of Antwerp’s long-standing involvement with learning and with the arts, that two of the most important figures of its cultural past are still present in the modern city through the preservation of their homes and workshops as museums: the 16th-century humanist printer Christophe Plantin (Plantin-Moretus Museum) and the 17th-century painter Peter Paul Rubens (Rubens House). Rubens’ works may be seen in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, as well as in the Cathedral of Our Lady and many other Antwerp churches, such as the Church of St. James, where the painter is buried. Rubens united Italianate traits and an attachment to the Flemish artistic tradition to create a highly personal style. His students and coworkers included the three 17th-century Antwerpians Jacob Jordaens, Anthony Van Dyck, and Frans Snyders; their works also may be seen in the Royal Museum, which houses a vast collection from the 15th to the 20th century.
A number of other museums are located in historical buildings such as the Steen, the medieval riverside castle that is home to the National Maritime Museum; the 16th-century Butchers’ Hall and Brewers’ Hall, both of which house historic arts and artifacts; and the Maagdenhuis (Flemish: “Maidens’ House”), a 16th-century charitable foundation for needy young women, where Renaissance art and furniture may be seen. Other small museums were established by 19th-century patrician families, such as the Mayer van den Bergh Museum, which contains sculpture, furniture, and paintings, notably Pieter Bruegel’s famous “Dulle Griet” (or “Mad Meg”). Museums for folklore and for ethnography are located not far from the Schelde. For modern art, there is the Museum of Contemporary Art, installed in a 1920s Art Deco grain silo in the old dock area of the port, which is close to the Provincial Museum of Photography, housed in a former warehouse built in 1911. In the Middelheim Open-Air Museum of Sculpture, the permanent collection is displayed among the trees and lawns of a public park located south of the old city, and every other year a special exhibition features works by young contemporary sculptors. Antwerp’s architecture ranges from Gothic to Postmodernism.
The performing arts in the city are represented by the Royal Flemish Opera House and by the Royal Dutch Theatre, and numerous theatrical and musical performances of traditional as well as modern works take place in the framework of Antwerp’s monuments, such as in the courtyard of the Rubens House. The city’s zoological garden is one of Europe’s oldest as well as most modern zoos.
The site of Antwerp was probably already inhabited, as excavations on the right bank of the Schelde have proved, in Gallo-Roman times, in the 2nd and 3rd centuries ad. After the great Eurasian migrations of the 4th and 5th centuries, the region was occupied and Germanized by Franks and possibly Frisians, who gave it its present name, from the Germanic prefix anda (“against”) and a noun derived from the verb werpen (“to throw”), indicating a structure—possibly a predecessor of Antwerp’s 9th-century fortified castle, the Steen—erected against something or someone.
A more picturesque etymology for the name of the city involves the story of the evil giant Druon Antigoon, who severed the hands of the river’s boatmen when they refused to pay his exorbitant tolls. The Roman soldier Silvius Brabo challenged him to a fight, cut off one of his hands, and flung it into the river, not far from the site of the present Steen, thus putting an end to the giant’s extortion and giving the city its name: literally, “to throw a hand.” Antwerp’s coat of arms consists of a fortified castle with a hand on each side; and in the Great Market, in front of the 16th-century Town Hall, the Brabo Fountain (1887) depicts the legendary event.
The city probably developed from two nuclei: a southern one called Chanelaus–Caloes–Callo and a later northern nucleus grown around the Steen, which eventually became the more important of the two. Christianity was introduced in the 7th century. In the 9th century the region became a border county of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1124 the religious centre was transferred from Chanelaus to the northern nucleus. It was around the castle, built originally as a seat for the border county, that Antwerp developed, in the course of the centuries, in more or less concentric half circles.
Situated relatively far inland on the deep right bank of the Schelde, Antwerp was predestined to become a trade and shipping centre. This was already fully the case in the 13th century. At the end of that century and the beginning of the 14th, freedom of trade was given to the English, Venetians, and Genoese by the dukes of Brabant, who had made themselves masters of the county. The city of Antwerp became one of the duchy’s capital cities, together with Leuven and Brussels, in Belgium, and the city of Hertogenbosch (Bois-le-Duc), in the Netherlands. In the first quarter of the 14th century, the Antwerp fairs began to flourish. These, together with the fairs of nearby Bergen op Zoom (now in The Netherlands) became one of the foundations of Antwerp’s medieval economic growth.
Antwerp succeeded in the 15th century in becoming the successor of Brugge (Bruges) in Flanders, which until then had been the mercantile metropolis of western Europe. At the end of the 15th century, when nearly all the Low Countries were united under the Burgundian and Habsburg dynasties, the economic preeminence of Antwerp over Brugge is indicated by the fact that the majority of foreign merchants transferred their residence from the old Flemish town to Antwerp. It quickly became the leading commercial centre of western Europe, profiting from the beginnings of colonial trade and stimulated by the great discoveries of the Portuguese and Spaniards. Toward the mid-16th century, the population totaled nearly 100,000, whereas there had been about 20,000 people in the city at the end of the 14th century. Extensive urbanization plans were developed to lodge the increasing population, who earned their livelihood in trade, transport, and industry.
The port underwent its first northward extension. New industries included breweries, malt factories, and bleaching works. Together with the already established finishing works of (English) cloth, tapestry, and silk factories, the sugar refineries, and the diamond industry, they made Antwerp one of the greatest industrial centres of western Europe. Antwerp also became a financial centre: its Stock Exchange (inaugurated 1531), a model for the younger London and Amsterdam exchanges, was the scene of dramatic and momentous events, in which financial agents and bankers of the Habsburg, Tudor, and Valois monarchs played their part, together with Antwerpian, English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, and German merchants. Antwerp also became a great cultural centre: its school of painting began to flourish at the end of the 15th century; the city’s printing houses became known throughout Europe; and humanism began to thrive.
State bankruptcies in Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere, together with religious troubles and ensuing wars (Antwerp early in the 16th century became a centre of Protestant activity), brought about a decline. Antwerp became involved in the revolt of the Netherlands and was taken, in 1585, by Alessandro Farnese, duke of Parma, governor general for the Spanish king. The consequences of this strife with Spain were severe: from 1585 to 1589 the population diminished from 80,000 to 42,000. The Schelde, gateway to the sea, was closed by the Dutch, maintaining their positions against King Philip II of Spain. Capital and enterprise emigrated from Antwerp, mostly northward. The economic greatness of Amsterdam in the 17th century was due in part to Antwerp emigrants and their financial support, as was the case, to a lesser extent, for Hamburg, Frankfurt am Main, and other mercantile cities.
Yet Antwerp was not reduced to the status of a nonentity. The city remained the dynamic economic centre of the Spanish (later, in the 18th century, the Austrian) Netherlands. Antwerp became a more famous art centre than ever before: this was the time of Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens, and other major artists. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic period, followed by Belgium’s temporary union with The Netherlands (1815–30), reversed the general decline in trade of the 18th century. With the Schelde once more freely navigable (restored by the French in 1792), the attraction of Antwerp as a seaport became evident again. Population grew, and the city began to expand and modernize.
Since the second half of the 19th century, the growth of Antwerp’s seaport has been interrupted only by the two world wars and associated German occupations; even the economic depression of the 1930s did not affect the expansion of port traffic and facilities. Immediately after liberation in 1944, Antwerp’s nearly unharmed port was instrumental in the supply of the Allied armies aiming their final blow against Nazi Germany, although bombardment by German missiles devastated the city. Since World War II Antwerp, its suburbs, and its seaport have grown apace, spurred by a commercial, industrial, and maritime boom. Port facilities, highways, and inland waterways have all been extended and improved. Some of this expansion, however, has created ecological problems, which have been investigated and addressed to some degree. Antwerp also has become the most important centre of finance and other services in northern Belgium, although the closure of the Antwerp Stock Exchange in 1997 reflects the increasing concentration of financial activities in Brussels.