Antwerp by night

Antwerp is just as pretty at night as during the day. The city has installed lights that highlight the statuettes on the gables of the old houses.

Moon rising over Antwerp

Last weekend the weather was balmy and the street cafes were full of people taking advantage of the unaccustomedly warm summer evenings. The inner city is car free so there is plenty of room for cafés to expand their seating and no car fumes for customers to deal with.

When I am in Europe I always wonder when Australia will finally bite the bullet and create car free zones in its cities and towns. They are long overdue.

New Zealand flag on the
top left of city hall. 

Town Square

The Cathedral is dramatic at night

Music in the Cathedral

The nave of Antwerp Cathedral in full of music, with a row of display boards with old manuscripts and explanations of each of them.

Show and tell: music in Antwerp Cathedral

In one chapel of the cathedral is a sound installation, a very modern installation playing very old polyphonic music.

Music manuscript

Hell in Antwerp

Some things are left out of official documentation.

Side alter

St Pauls

There is a wonderful mixed Baroque/Gothic church with lots of fancy Baroque ornamentation not far from Antwerp's red light district. It is called St Paul's Church and what they don't tell you the printed documentation is that during a fire which destroyed the roof in the 1960s, the precious paintings were saved by the call girls working nearby. There they were in half undress, carrying huge works from the building into the night.

When you read the chequered histories of such buildings, you wonder that anything is left of the artworks and sculptures at all.

Hell

St Pauls is a strange building. There is a gate at the side, not always open, which leads you to sculpture grottos depicting the tortures awaiting those who go to hell.

Exterior additions over
the hell grottos.

Antwerp in Flanders

I lived in Antwerp for 9 months when I was 22 and hadn't been back since. I had forgotten how pretty the city is, particularly the inner city.

Antwerp cathedral

A glorious cathedral, said to be the finest Gothic cathedral in Europe,  towers over the old town with its distinctive Flemish houses.

Antwerp inner city

I was told the houses are used, either for city administration or as private housing as that is the way to make sure they are maintained.

Side chapel in the Cathedral with
Our Lady of Antwerp.

Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp

It is a very religious city, is now Catholic but was Protestant in its past. Like much of Europe the religion changed with the overlords.

If you ask the people here where they come from they say they are Flemish or European, not Belgian.