The artistic fame of Antwerp dates from the rule (15th cent.) of Philip the Good of Burgundy, who founded an academy of painting. The painters Quentin Massys and Peter Paul Rubens resided in the city, and Anthony Van Dyck was born there. Many of their works are in the museums and churches of Antwerp. Christophe Plantin made (16th cent.) the city a center of printing; his house is a museum.
Among Antwerp's many splendid structures are the large Gothic Cathedral of Notre Dame (14th-16th cent.), with a spire c.400 ft (122 m) high; the churches of St. James (containing the tomb of Rubens) and St. Paul (both 16th cent.); the Renaissance-style city hall (mid-16th cent.); Rubens's house (now a museum); and old guildhalls lining the Groote Markt [marketplace]. Antwerp also has a zoological garden and a noted school of music.
Antwerp was a small trading center by the early 8th cent. It was destroyed by the Normans in 836, but by the 11th cent. it was a fairly important port. The city was chartered in 1291. Antwerp was held (13th to mid-14th cent.) by Brabant and then became an early seat of the counts of Flanders. In the 15th cent. it rose to prominence as Bruges and Ghent declined. In 1446 the English Merchant Adventurers and other traders motivated port trade by moving their operations from Bruges to Antwerp. By the middle of the 16th cent. Antwerp was Europe's chief commercial and financial center. The diamond industry, established in the 15th cent., had expanded considerably after the arrival (early 16th cent.) of Jewish artisans expelled from Portugal. The city's prosperity suffered in 1576, when it was sacked and about 6,000 of its inhabitants killed by Spanish troops (the "Spanish fury"), and again in 1584-85, when the city was captured by the Spanish under Alessandro of Farnese after a 14-month siege.
Under the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the Scheldt was closed to navigation (as a means of favoring Amsterdam), and Antwerp declined rapidly. The city revived with the opening of the Scheldt by the French in 1795 and with the expansion of its port facilities by Napoleon I. The incorporation (1815) of Belgium into the Netherlands again hindered Antwerp's economic development, a situation that was continued by the Dutch-Belgian treaty of separation (1839), which gave the Netherlands the right to collect tolls on Scheldt shipping. The expansion of Antwerp as a major modern port dates only from 1863, when, by a cash payment, Belgium ended Dutch restrictions on traffic on the Scheldt. Antwerp was seriously damaged in World War I when it was captured (Oct., 1914) by the Germans after a 12-day siege. In World War II it was again taken (May, 1940) by the Germans, who bombarded it heavily after it had been recaptured (Sept., 1944) by the Allies.
City (pop., 2000 est.: 446,500), capital of Antwerp province, Belgium. One of the world's major seaports, it is located 55 mi (88 km) southeast of the North Sea. Because it lies in the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium, it plays the role of unofficial capital of Flanders. It received municipal rights in 1291 and became a member of the Hanseatic League by 1315. As a distribution centre for Spanish and Portuguese trade, it became the commercial and financial capital of Europe in the 16th century. Following destructive invasions it went into decline but began to revive after Napoleon's improvement of the harbour circa 1803. It was part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815–30), then was ceded to Belgian nationalists. Its current economic life centres around shipping, port-related activities, and major manufacturing.
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Antwerp (Dutch: , French: Anvers) is a city and municipality in Belgium and the capital of the Antwerp province in Flanders, one of Belgium's three regions. Antwerp's total population is 472,071 (as of January 2008) and its total area is 204.51 km², giving a population density of 2,308 inhabitants per km².
Antwerp has long been an important city in the nations of the Benelux both economically and culturally, especially before the Spanish Fury of the Dutch Revolt. It is located on the right bank of the river Scheldt, which is linked to the North Sea by the Westerschelde.
In favour of this folk etymology is the fact that hand-cutting was indeed practised in Europe, the right hand of a man who died without issue being cut off and sent to the feudal lord as proof of main-morte. However, John Lothrop Motley argues that Antwerp's name derives from an 't werf (on the wharf). Aan 't werp (at the warp) is also possible. This 'warp' (thrown ground) would be a man made hill, just high enough to remain dry at high tide, whereupon a farm would be built. An other word for werp is pol (hence polders).
The most prevailing theory is that the name originated in the Gallo-Roman period and comes from the Latin antverpia. Antverpia would come from Ante (against) Verpia (deposition, sedimentation), indicating land that forms by deposition in the inside curve of a river. Note that the river Scheldt, before a transition period between 600 to 750, followed a different track. This must have coincided roughly with the current ringway south of the city, situating the city within a former curve of the river.
In the 4th century, Antwerp was first named, having been settled by the Germanic Franks. The name was reputed to have been derived from "anda" (at) and "werpum" (wharf).
The 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.
In the eleventh century Godfrey of Bouillon was for some years best known as marquis of Antwerp. In the 12th century, Norbert of Xanten established a community of his Premonstratensian canons at St. Michael’s Abbey at Caloes.
Antwerp was the headquarters of Edward III during his early negotiations with Jacob van Artevelde, and his son Lionel, the earl of Cambridge, was born there in 1338.
Fernand Braudel states that Antwerp became "the center of the entire international economy—something Bruges had never been even at its height." (Braudel 1985 p. 143.) 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. Many foreign merchants were resident in the city. Guicciardini, the Venetian envoy, stated that hundreds of ships would pass in a day, and 2000 carts entered the city each week. Portuguese ships laden with pepper and cinnamon would unload their cargo.
Without a long-distance merchant fleet, and governed by an oligarchy of banker-aristocrats forbidden to engage in trade, the economy of Antwerp was foreigner-controlled, which made the city very international, with merchants and traders from Venice, Ragusa, Spain and Portugal. Antwerp had a policy of toleration, which attracted a large orthodox Jewish community. Antwerp was not a "free" city though, since it had been reabsorbed into the duchy of Brabant in 1406 and was controlled from Brussels.
Antwerp experienced three booms during its golden age, the first based on the pepper market, a second launched by American silver coming from Seville (ending with the bankruptcy of Spain in 1557), and a third boom, after the stabilising Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, in 1559, based on the textiles industry. The boom-and-bust cycles and inflationary cost-of-living squeezed less-skilled workers.
The religious revolution of the Reformation erupted in violent riots in August 1566, as in other parts of the Netherlands. The regent Margaret, duchess of Parma, was swept aside when Philip II sent the Duke of Alba at the head of an army the following summer. When the Eighty Years' War broke out in 1572, commercial trading between Antwerp and the Spanish port of Bilbao was not possible. On November 4, 1576, the Spanish soldiers plundered the city. During the Spanish Fury 6000 citizens were massacred, 800 houses were burnt down, and over two millions sterling of damage was done.
Antwerp became the capital of the Dutch revolt. In 1585, Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza, captured it after a long siege and sent its Protestant citizens into exile. Antwerp's banking was controlled for a generation by Genoa and Amsterdam became the new trading centre.
The recognition of the independence of the United Provinces by the Treaty of Münster in 1648 stipulated that the Scheldt should be closed to navigation, which destroyed Antwerp's trading activities. 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 United 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 strategic importance, assigned two million for the construction of two docks and a mole. 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 Chassé subjected the town to periodic 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 damaged. In December 1832, after a gallant defence, Chassé made an honourable surrender.
Antwerp hosted the 1920 Summer Olympics. During World War II the city was occupied by Germany in May 1940 and was liberated when the British 11th Armoured Division entered the city on September 4, 1944. After this, the Germans attempted to destroy the Port of Antwerp, which was used by the Allies to bring new material ashore. Thousands of V-1 and V-2 missiles battered the city. The city was hit by more V-2s 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. As a result, the city itself was severely damaged and rebuilt after the war in a modern style. After the war, Antwerp, which had already had a sizable Jewish population before the war, once again became a major European center of Haredi (and particularly Hasidic) Orthodox Judaism.
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The municipality comprises the city of Antwerp proper and several towns. It is divided into nine entities (districts):
Although Antwerp was formerly a fortified city, nothing remains of the former enceinte or of the old citadel defended by General Chassé in 1832, except for the Steen, which has been restored. Modern Antwerp's broad avenues mark the position of the original fortifications. After the establishment of Belgian independence, Antwerp was defended by the citadel and an enceinte around the city. In 1859, seventeen of the twenty-two fortresses constructed under Wellington's supervision in 1815–1818 were dismantled and the old citadel and enceinte were removed. A new enceinte 8 miles long was constructed, and the villages of Berchem and Borgerhout, now parishes of Antwerp, were absorbed within the city.
This enceinte is protected by a broad wet ditch, and in the caponiers are the magazines and store chambers of the fortress. The enceinte has 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 from the enceinte were constructed. They begin on the north near Wijnegem and the zone of inundation, and terminate on the south at Hoboken. In 1870 Fort Merksem and the redoubts of Berendrecht and Oorderen were built for the defence of the area to be inundated north of Antwerp.
In the 1870s, the fortifications of Antwerp were deemed to be out of date, given the increased range and power of artillery and explosives. Antwerp was transformed into a fortified position by constructing an outer line of forts and batteries 6 to 9 miles from the enceinte.
According to the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA) Antwerp's sea port was the seventeenth largest (by tonnage) port in the world in 2005 and second only to Rotterdam in Europe. Importantly it handles high volumes of economically attractive general cargo and project cargo, as well as bulk . Antwerp's docklands, with five oil refineries, are home to a massive concentration of petrochemical industries, second only to the petrochemical cluster in Houston, Texas. Power generation is also an important activity, with four nuclear power plants at Doel, a conventional power station in Kallo, as well as several smaller combined cycle plants. There are plans for a wind farm in a disused area of the docklands. The old Belgian bluestone quays bordering the Scheldt for a distance of 3 ½ miles to the north and south of the city centre have been retained for their sentimental value and are used mainly by cruise liners and short-sea shipping.
Antwerp's other great mainstay is the diamond trade. The city has four diamond bourses. One for boart and three for gem quality goods. Since the Second World War families of the large Hasidic Jewish community have dominated Antwerp's diamond trading industry although the last two decades have seen Indian and Armenian traders become increasingly important.
Antwerp World Diamond Centre
, the successor to the Hoge Raad voor Diamant, plays an important role in setting standards, regulating professional ethics, training and promoting the interests of Antwerp as a centre of the diamond industry.
It is served by international trains to Amsterdam and Paris, and national trains to Ghent, Bruges, Ostend, Brussels, Charleroi, Hasselt, Liège and Turnhout.
Its Central station is an architectural monument in itself, and is mentioned in W G Sebald's haunting novel Austerlitz. Prior to the completion in 2007 of a tunnel that runs northwards under the city centre to emerge at the old Antwerp Dam station, Centraal was a terminus. Trains to the Netherlands either had to reverse at Centraal or call only at Berchem, 2 km to the south, and then describe a semicircle to the east, round the Singel.
Brussels Airport is about 45 km from the city of Antwerp, and connects the city worldwide. The airport is connected by bus and by train to the city centre of Antwerp
Antwerp had an artistic reputation in the 17th century, based on its school of painting, which included Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens, the two Teniers and many others. Informally, most Antverpians (in Dutch Antwerpenaren, people from Antwerp) daily speak Antverpian, a dialect that Dutch-speakers know as distinctive from other Brabantic dialects through its typical vowel pronunciations: approximating the vowel sound in 'bore'— for one of its 'a'-sounds while other 'a's are very sharp. The Echt Antwaarps Teater ('Authentic Antverpian Theatre') brings the dialect on stage.
Within the context of development cooperation, Antwerp is also linked to: