Antwerp (city)

Antwerp (city), city in northern Belgium, administrative center of the province of Antwerpen, on the Schelde River, also called the Escaut River, near the North Sea and Brussels. One of Europe's major seaports, Antwerp is the chief port and second largest city of Belgium. It is connected with the industrial regions of southeastern Belgium by the Albert Canal, which links it with Liège; Antwerp also trades actively with the Ruhr district in Germany. Grain and unrefined metals are major imports; exports include machinery, textiles, and other manufactured products. Antwerp is especially noted for such industries as diamond cutting, shipbuilding, automobile assembly, and the manufacture of metal goods, electronic equipment, chemicals, and dyes.

Among the outstanding features of Antwerp is its system of boulevards, which replaced the walls that formerly encircled the city. Perhaps the most interesting edifice in Antwerp is the Gothic-style Cathedral of Notre Dame (14th and 15th century), which is surmounted by a spire 121.9 m (400 ft) high. The cathedral contains several paintings by the 17th-century Flemish artist Rubens, who spent most of his life in Antwerp. Other points of interest in the city include the town hall and the Gothic-style Church of Saint Paul, both completed in the 16th century, and the many guild houses dating from the Middle Ages that still line the marketplace. The city has a museum of fine arts with paintings by several of the Flemish masters and botanical and zoological gardens.

Antwerp became a port of commercial importance in the 15th century, when the first European stock exchange was founded in the city. The city rapidly became one of the foremost trading and manufacturing centers of Europe. During the early 16th century, the diamond industry was expanded by the arrival of Jewish craftspeople expelled from Portugal. The city was also an active cultural center, renowned particularly for the Antwerp school of painting. Antwerp rapidly declined as a result of religious troubles after 1576, the year mutinous Spanish troops sacked the city. This attack was followed by another in 1584, and the city was forced to surrender to the Spanish in 1585. In 1648 Antwerp suffered a further blow under the provisions of the treaty known as the Peace of Westphalia, which closed the Schelde River to navigation; it was reopened in 1795 by the French.

The development of the modern city of Antwerp started in 1863, when the Belgians redeemed their navigation rights through a cash payment to the Netherlands. During World War I, Antwerp was occupied by the Germans from October 1914 until the end of the war in 1918. During World War II (1939-1945), German troops again occupied the city and held it until September 1944. Antwerp then became an Allied supply base and was heavily bombed. In 1997 the Antwerp stock exchange closed its doors after almost 500 years of operation. Population (2006 estimate) 464,038.