Antwerp has long been at the centre of things. Belgium’s handsome northern city grew wealthy on the profits of its port, trading since the 16th century in glittering diamonds, priceless works of art and the spices and spoils of assorted empires. The Port of Antwerp remains extraordinary: a Blade Runner-esque noirscape of industrial architecture, where the rusted hulks of old trade ships sit side-by-side with space-age modern buildings, presided over by a steel canopy of creaking girders and looming cranes. Nothing encapsulates the port’s double-edged character like the Zaha Hadid-designed Havenhuis, where a futurist, diamond-like building glitters atop a historic former fire station. In the midst of it all are remnants of the port’s pre-industrial life — lonely church towers, frozen windmills and, most charming of all, the village of Lillo: a pocket of Old Flanders marooned among reed beds and duckboard walkways.
Today, most visitors arrive in Antwerp by train, with the city’s heritage on show in the cavernous marble hallways of Antwerpen-Centraal railway station, a masterwork of art nouveau architecture. This style crops up throughout the city, most notably in the fashionable district of Zurenborg, where eye-catching houses are testament to a boom during the late 1800s. Antwerp
