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Antwerp (; ) is a city and a municipality and the chief centre of commerce in Belgium; it is capital of Antwerp province, in Flanders, one of Belgium's three regions. Antwerp's total population is ca. 461,496 (January 2006). Its total area is 204.51 km² with a population density of 2,257 inhabitants per km². The agglomeration has a population of ca. 800,000 (municipality: 461,496 (2006), metropolitan area: ca. 1,225,000 (2004)).

Overview

Antwerp, historically one of Belgium and the Low Countries' most important cities in terms of economy and culture, is situated on the right bank of the river Scheldt which by the Westerschelde links to the North Sea. The port, one of the world's largest and in Europe preceeded only by Rotterdam and Hamburg, has a high level of cargo shipping and oil refineries. Families of the largest Hassidic Jewish community outside of New York traditionally control the top center of the global diamond industry – before London's Hatton Garden aka Diamond street, New York City's diamond district, and South Africa. Since the 1990s several graduates of the Belgian Royal Academy of Fine Arts have become internationally successful fashion designers in Antwerp.

The Antwerp Zoo is one of the oldest and most famous in the world, and home to more than 4,000 animals. The Royal Society for Zoology focused on ensuring the welfare of numerous animals and helping to protect threatened species for more than 100 years.

Next to the zoo is the Central Station in the middle of the city. Designed by architect Louis Delacenserie (1838-1909) and completed in 1905, the railway station's architecture features two monumental neo-baroque facades, topped by a large metal and glass dome (60m/197ft). The dome covers the train platforms which is typical for turn-of-the-century railway stations in Europe. Antwerp is the end of the extension of the oldest railway line in continental Europe (between Brussels and the city of Mechelen in May 1835, till Antwerp in May 1836). Designed with all gilt and marble, the interior has been called a Renaissance painters fantasy of what classical design should be. A few years ago, the Centraal Station was used in the British television series 'Hercule Poirot'. In the series, the famous 'Belgian' detective visited Brussels and many Belgians were surprised to see that, during the filming, the Antwerp station had changed its name to 'Gare de Bruxelles' (Brussels Station).

Modern Antwerp is a finely laid out city with a succession of broad avenues which mark the position of the first enceinte. There are long streets and terraces of fine houses belonging to the merchants and manufacturers of the city which amply testify to its prosperity, and recall the 16th century distich that Antwerp was noted for its moneyed men ("Antwerpia nummis"). Despite the ravages of war and internal disturbances it still preserves some memorials of its early grandeur, notably its fine Cathedral of Our Lady. This church was begun in the 14th century, but not finished till 1518. Its tower of over 400 feet is a conspicuous object to be seen from afar over the surrounding flat country. A second tower which formed part of the original plan has never been erected. The proportions of the interior are noble, and in the church are hung three of the masterpieces of Rubens, viz. "The Descent from the Cross," "The Elevation of the Cross," and "The Assumption." Another fine church in Antwerp is that of St James, far more ornate than the cathedral, and containing the tomb of Rubens, who devoted himself to its embellishment. The Bourse or exchange, which claims to be the first distinguished by the former name in Europe, is a fine new building finished in 1872, on the site of the old Bourse erected in 1531 and destroyed by fire in 1858. Fire has destroyed several other old buildings in the city, notably in 1891 the house of the Hansa League on the northern quays. A curious museum is the Plantin-Moretus Museum, the house of the great printer Christoffel Plantijn and his successor Jan Moretus, which stands exactly as it did in the time of the latter. The new picture gallery close to the southern quays is a fine building divided into ancient and modern sections. The collection of old masters is very fine, containing many splendid examples of Rubens, Van Dyck, Titian and the chief Dutch masters. Antwerp, famous in the middle ages and at the present time for its commercial enterprise, enjoyed in the 17th century a celebrity not less distinct or glorious in art for its school of painting, which included Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens, the two Teniers and many others. Antwerpenaren (people from Antwerp) tend to be very proud of their city. Their dialect is recognised by Dutch-speaking people because of its A-sound, which sounds more like oa (as in boar). Because of this and their habit of being assertive, they have earned the reputation of "having a big mouth".

Antwerp will also be hosting The Tall Ships' Races 50th anniversary celebrations in the summer of 2006.

Commerce

Since 1863, when Antwerp was opened to the trade of the outer world by the purchase of the Dutch right to levy toll, its position has completely changed, and no place in Europe made greater progress in that period than the ancient city on the Scheldt.

The eight principal basins or docks already existing in 1908 were

  1. the Little or Bonaparte dock;
  2. the Great dock, also constructed in Napoleon's time;
  3. the Kattendijk, built in 1860 and enlarged in 1881;
  4. the Wood dock;
  5. the Campine dock, used especially for minerals;
  6. the Asia dock, which is in direct communication with the Meuse by a canal as well as with the Scheldt;
  7. the Lefebvre dock; and
  8. the America dock, which was only opened in 1905.
Two new docks, called "intercalary" because they would fit into whatever scheme might be adopted for the rectification of the course of the Scheldt, were still to be constructed, leading out of the Lefebvre dock and covering 70 acres.

With the completion of the new maritime lock, ships drawing 30 feet of water would be able to enter these new docks and also the Lefebvre and America docks. In connexion with the projected grande coupure (that is, a cutting through the neck of the loop in the river Scheldt immediately below Antwerp), the importance of these four docks would be greatly increased because they would then flank the new main channel of the river. When the Belgian Chambers voted in February 1906 the sums necessary for the improvement of the harbour of Antwerp no definite scheme was sanctioned, the question being referred to a special mixed commission. The improvements at Antwerp were not confined to the construction of new docks. The quays flanking the Scheldt are 3-½ miles in length. They are constructed of granite, and no expense has been spared in equipping them with hydraulic cranes, warehouses, &c.

Fortifications

Besides being the chief commercial port of Belgium, Antwerp had the greatest fortress in the country. Nothing, however, remains of the former enceinte or even of the famous old citadel defended by General Chassé in 1832, except the Steen, which has been restored and contains a shipping museum. After the establishment of Belgian independence Antwerp was defended only by the citadel and an enceinte of about 2-½ miles round the city. No change occurred till 1859, when the system of Belgian defence was radically altered by the dismantlement of seventeen of the twenty-two fortresses constructed under Wellington's supervision in 1815-1818. At Antwerp the old citadel and enceinte were removed. A new enceinte 8 miles in length was constructed, and the villages of Berchem and Borgerhout, now parishes of Antwerp, were absorbed within the city. This enceinte still exists, and is a fine work of art. It is protected by a broad wet ditch, and in the caponiers are the magazines and store chambers of the fortress. The enceinte is pierced by nineteen openings or gateways, but of these seven are not used by the public. As soon as the enceinte was finished eight detached forts from 2 to 2-½ miles distant from the enceinte were constructed. They begin on the north near Wyneghem and the zone of inundation, and terminate on the south at Hoboken. In 1870 Fort Merxem and the redoubts of Berendrecht and Oorderen were built for the defence of the area to be inundated north of Antwerp. In 1878, in consequence of the increased range of artillery and the more destructive power of explosives, it was recognized that the fortifications of Antwerp were becoming useless and out of date. It was therefore decided to change it from a fortress to a fortified position by constructing an outer line of forts and batteries at a distance varying from 6 to 9 miles from the enceinte. This second line was to consist of fifteen forts, large and small. Up to 1898 only five had been constructed, but in that and the two following years five more were finished, leaving another five to complete the line. A mixed commission selected the points at which they were to be placed. With the completion of this work, which in 1908 was being rapidly pushed on, Antwerp might be regarded as one of the best fortified positions in Europe, and so long as its communications by sea are preserved intact it will be practically impregnable.

Two subsidiary or minor problems remained.

  1. The much-discussed removal of the existing enceinte in order to give Antwerp further growing space. If it were removed there arose the further question, should a new enceinte be made at the first line of outer forts, or should an enceinte be dispensed with? An enceinte following the line of those forts would be 30 miles in length. Then if the city grew up to this extended enceinte the outer forts would be too near. To screen the city from bombardment they would have to be carried 3 miles further out, and the whole Belgian army would scarcely furnish an adequate garrison for this extended position. A new enceinte, or more correctly a rampart of a less permanent character, connecting the eight forts of the inner line and extending from Wyneghem to a little south of Hoboken, was decided upon in 1908.
  2. The second problem was the position on the left bank of the Scheldt. All the defences enumerated are on the right bank. On the left bank the two old forts Isabelle and Marie alone defend the Scheldt. It is assumed (probably rightly) that no enemy could get round to this side in sufficient strength to deliver any attack that the existing forts could not easily repel. The more interesting question connected with the left bank is whether it does not provide, as Napoleon thought, the most natural outlet for the expansion of Antwerp. Proposals to connect the two banks by a tunnel under the Scheldt have been made from time to time in a fitful manner, but nothing whatever had been done by 1908 to realize what appears to be a natural and easy project.

History

According to folklore, the city got its name from a legend involving a mythical giant called Antigoon that lived near the river Scheldt. This giant exacted a toll from passers-by who wished to navigate the river. On refusal, the giant often severed one of their hands and threw them into the Scheldt. Eventually, the giant was slain by a young hero named Brabo, who cut off the giant's hand and threw it into the river. Hence the name Antwerpen from Dutch hand werpen (hand-throwing). There's a statue of Brabo and the slain Antigoon on the Grote Markt in front of the town hall as can be seen on the picture of the Antwerp Stadhuis above. In addition you are apt to come across sculptures of hands in various sizes and forms throughout the city, and hand-shaped cookies can be bought in any chocolate shop.

This suggested origin of the name Antwerp appeared to Motley rather farfetched, but it is less reasonable to trace it, as he inclines to do, from an t werf (on the wharf), seeing that the form Andhunerbo existed in the 6th century on the separation of Austrasia and Neustria (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911). Moreover, hand-cutting was not an uncommon practice in Europe. It was perpetuated from a savage past in the custom of cutting off the right hand of a man who died without heir, and sending it as proof of main-morte to the feudal lord. Moreover, the two hands and a castle, which form the arms of Antwerp, will not be dismissed as providing no proof by any one acquainted with the scrupulous care that heralds displayed in the golden age of chivalry before assigning or recognizing the armorial bearings of any claimant.

The historical Antwerp had its origins in a Gallo-Roman vicus that was revealed in excavations carried out in the oldest section near the Scheldt, 1952 to 1961 (ref. Princeton). Beneath the postholes of Carolingian wooden houses was found a layer of backfill that had been used to raise the ground level, its pottery sherds and fragments of glass dated from mid second century to the end of the third century, when Roman habitation was ended by marine flooding or Frankish invasions or both. In the fourth century Antwerp is mentioned as one of the places in Germania Secunda . Merovingian Antwerp, now fortified, was evangelized by Saint Amand in the seventh century. At the end of the tenth century, the Scheldt became the boundary of the Holy Roman Empire; Antwerp became a margraviate—a border province facing the County of Flanders on the other shore. In the eleventh century Godfrey of Bouillon was for some years best known as marquis of Antwerp.

In the twelfth century Norbert of Xanten established a community of his Premonstratensian canons at St. Michael’s Abbey at Caloes, half a kilometer to the south, displacing the local priest, who removed to the northern settlement and founded a new parish there; its chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary was the forerunner of the Cathedral. Antwerp was the headquarters of Edward III during his early negotiations with Jacob van Artevelde; his son Lionel, earl of Cambridge, was born there in 1338.

It was not, however, till after the closing of the Zwyn and the decay of Bruges that the city of Antwerp, now part of the Duchy of Brabant, became of importance. At the end of the 15th century the foreign trading gilds or houses were transferred from Bruges to Antwerp, and the building assigned to the English nation is specifically mentioned in 1510.

Antwerp became, as Fernand Braudel pointed out "the center of the entire international economy—something Bruges had never been even at its height." (Braudel 1985 p. 143.) He dates the opening of the new order with the arrival of the first Portuguese ship laden with pepper and cinnamon in 1501. Antwerp's "Golden Age" is tightly linked to the "Age of Exploration". Over the first half of the 16th century Antwerp grew to become the second largest European city north of the Alps by 1560.

In 1560, a year which marked the highest point of its prosperity, six nations, viz. the Spaniards, the Danes and the Hansa together, the Italians, the English, the Portuguese and the Germans, were named at Antwerp, and over 1000 foreign merchants were resident in the city. Guicciardini, the Venetian envoy, describes the activity of the port, into which 500 ships sometimes passed in a day, and as evidence of the extent of its land trade he mentioned that 2000 carts entered the city each week. Venice had fallen from its first place in European commerce, but still it was active and prosperous. Its envoy, in explaining the importance of Antwerp, states that there was as much business done there in a fortnight as in Venice throughout the year.

During this period Antwerp clung to some disadvantages. Without a long-distance merchant fleet, and governed by an oligarchy of banker-aristocrats forbidden to engage in trade, the economy of Antwerp was in the hands of the foreigners who made the city very international. Ships from Venice, Ragusa, Spain or Portugal met in the port where Portuguese pepper and silks met German silver. Antwerp wisely embraced a policy of toleration: even today Antwerp is nicknamed "The Jerusalem of the West" because of its large orthodox Jewish (hasidic) community. Antwerp in its greatness was not even a "free" city; it had been reabsorbed into the duchy of Brabant in 1406 and was controlled from Brussels.

Antwerp experienced three booms during its century, the first based on the pepper market, a second launched by American silver coming from Seville that came to an abrupt end with the bankruptcy of Spain in 1557. A third boom, after the stabilising Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, in 1559, was based on industrial production of textiles.

The boom-and-bust cycles and inflationary cost-of-living put a squeeze on Antwerp's less-skilled workers, and the profound religious revolution of the Reformation erupted in violent iconoclastic riots in August 1566, here as in every other part of the Netherlands. The conciliating presence of the regent Margaret, duchess of Parma was swept aside when Philip II sent the Duke of Alva to restore peace and orthodoxy at the head of an army the following summer. The Eighty Years' War broke out in earnest in 1572, and commercial communication between Antwerp and the Spanish port of Bilbao was essentially terminated. On November 4, 1576, the Spanish soldiery plundered the town during what was called The Spanish Fury, and 6000 citizens were massacred. Eight hundred houses were burnt down, and over two millions sterling of damage was wrought in the town on that occasion. Antwerp became the capital of the Dutch revolt. In 1585 a severe blow was struck at the prosperity of the city when Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza captured it after a long siege and sent all its Protestant citizens into exile. Antwerp's banking was assumed for a generation by Genoa and its mercantile supremacy passed to Amsterdam. The recognition of the independence of the United Provinces by the treaty of Munster in 1648 carried with it the death-blow to Antwerp's prosperity as a place of trade, for one of its clauses stipulated that the Scheldt should be closed to navigation. This impediment remained in force until 1863, although the provisions were relaxed during French rule from 1795 to 1814, and also during the time Belgium formed part of the kingdom of the Netherlands (1815 to 1830). Antwerp had reached the lowest point of its fortunes in 1800, and its population had sunk under 40,000, when Napoleon, realizing its strategical importance, assigned two millions for the construction of two docks and a mole.

One other incident in the chequered history of Antwerp deserves mention. In 1830 the city was captured by the Belgian insurgents, but the citadel continued to be held by a Dutch garrison under General David Hendrik Chassé. For a time this officer subjected the town to a periodical bombardment which inflicted much damage, and at the end of 1832 the citadel itself was besieged by a French army. During this attack the town was further injured. In December 1832, after a gallant defence, Chassé made an honourable surrender.

During World War I, the city became the fallback point of the Belgian Army after the defeat at Liège. It was taken after heavy fighting by the German Army, and the Belgians were forced to retreat westward.

During World War II the city was occupied by Germany and was liberated on September 4, 1944 when the British 11th Armored Division entered the city. After this, the Germans attempted to destroy the Port of Antwerp, which was used by the Allies to bring new material ashore. The city was hit by more V-2 rockets than any other target during the entire war, but the attack did not succeed in destroying the port since many of the missiles fell upon other parts of the city. Also many V-1 and some V-2 missiles battered the city. As a result, the city itself was severely damaged and rebuilt after the war in a modern style.

Antwerp also hosted the 1920 Summer Olympics and was the first city to host the World Gymnastics Championships, in 1903.

Historical population

This is the population of the city of Antwerp only, not of the larger current municipality of the same name.

Municipality

The municipality comprises the city of Antwerp proper and several towns. So it can be divided into nine entities (districten in Dutch):

  1. Antwerp (town)
  2. Berchem
  3. Berendrecht-Zandvliet-Lillo
  4. Borgerhout
  5. Deurne
  6. Ekeren
  7. Hoboken, Antwerp
  8. Merksem
  9. Wilrijk

Sports

The major football clubs are R. Antwerp F.C. and K.F.C. Germinal Beerschot.

People who were born or have lived in Antwerp

See also

Notes

References

  • Carolus Scribani, Origines Antwerpiensium, 1610
  • Gens, Histoire de la ville d'Anvers
  • F.H. Mertens, K.L. Torfs, Geschiedenis van Antwerpen sedert de stichting der. stad tot onze tyden, vol. 7, Antwerp 1853
  • J. L. Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1856.
  • P. Génard, Anvers à travers les ages
  • Annuaire statistique de la Belgique.
  • Richard Stillwell, ed. Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, 1976: "Antwerp Belgium"

External links

Antwerp | Cities in Belgium | Host cities of the Summer Olympic Games | Municipalities of Antwerp | World Book Capital | Port cities | Orthodox Jewish communities

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