9 Best Sights in The Meir, Diamantwijk, and Centraal Station, Antwerp and the Northeast

Taking its cue more from Willy Wonka than any museum, this carnivalesque look at the humble cocoa bean is one of the city's biggest crowd-pleasers. Inventive and whimsical, room after room boasts Heath Robinson--esque contraptions that make the history of chocolate making and its production a story worth telling. It's as theatrical as it is informative, using projections, stagecraft, and workshops. Audio guides are pointed at information points along the way, and some rooms are time-locked so you can't leave until your group is done, but there's often a handful of chocolates on hand to quiet the impatient. The finale is a tasting room where you're free to try 10 different kinds of melted chocolate.

A fabulous picture of Rubens as painter and patrician is presented here at his own house, where the elaborate portico and temple, designed by Rubens in Italian Baroque style, were the only things still standing three centuries after the house was built. Most of what you can see today is a reconstruction (completed in 1946) from the master's own design. It represents Rubens at the pinnacle of his fame, when he was appointed court painter to Archduke Albrecht and, with his wife, was sent on a diplomatic mission to Madrid, where he also painted some 40 portraits. He conducted peace negotiations in London on behalf of Philip IV of Spain, and while in London he painted the ceiling of the Whitehall Banqueting Hall and was knighted by Charles I of Great Britain.

Rubens completed about 2,500 paintings, nearly all characterized by the energy and exuberance that were his hallmark. The interior of the house is closed to visitors until at least 2030, while it undergoes essential renovations. In the meantime, you can explore a re-creation of Rubens's original courtyard garden, now containing 17,500 plants. It was redesigned in 2024, with the help of Antwerp fashion design legend Dries Van Noten, to ensure a riot of color throughout the year. The garden is accessed via a new visitor center, which also opened in 2024. Located in the basement here is the Rubens Experience, a 30-minute audiovisual journey that immerses you in the life and times of the great artist. Note that these shows alternate between English and Dutch—English presentations begin at half past each hour.

The neo-Baroque railway terminal was built at the turn of the 20th century during the reign of Leopold II of Belgium, a monarch not given to understatement. The magnificent exterior and splendid, vaulted ticket-office hall and staircases call out for hissing steam engines, peremptory conductors, scurrying porters, and languid ladies wrapped in boas. Today most departures and arrivals are humble commuter trains, but the station still inspires. Two underground levels, added to accommodate high-speed trains, has turned the track areas into an impressively vast open space.

Antwerp's zoo houses its residents in style. Giraffes, ostriches, and African antelopes inhabit an Egyptian temple and a thriving Congolese okapi family grazes around a Moorish temple. In part, this reflects the public's taste when the zoo was created 170 years ago. Today, animals are allowed maximum space, and much research is devoted to endangered species. The zoo also has sea lions, an aquarium, and a house for nocturnal animals.

This beguinage—a community of women who dedicated themselves to religious duties without taking any vows—dates from the 13th century, but by the 1960s there was only one beguine left. Redbrick buildings surrounding a courtyard garden give a sense of tranquility as you stroll the roughly cobbled walk. The building is a little difficult to find, but your efforts will be rewarded with serene surroundings and charming houses, which you can only view from the outside.

Some 85% of the world's uncut diamonds pass through Antwerp, and the diamond trade has its own quarter, where the skills of cutting and polishing the gems have been handed down for generations by a tightly knit community. Twenty-five million carats are cut and traded here every year, more than anywhere else in the world. The district occupies a few nondescript city blocks west of Centraal Station. A large part of the community is Jewish, so you'll see shop signs in Hebrew and Hasidic men with traditional dark clothing and side curls, though many of the businesses are now Indian-owned. Below the elevated railway tracks, a long row of stalls and shops gleams with jewelry and gems. Diamond cutting began in Bruges but moved to Antwerp in the late 15th century, and the industry now employs some 8,000 workers. Many shops close for the Saturday sabbath.

The chapel and entrance gateway of the Maagdenhuis (Maidens' House), a foundling hospital for girls of the poor, was constructed from 1564 to 1568 and closed in 1882, when more modern institutions became available. Normally it houses a museum that reflects its former role, but for the next several years (until at least 2027), the building has has a new temporary role—it's being used to exhibit 60 or so paintings on loan from the nearby Museum Mayer van den Bergh, while that gallery undergoes its own essential restoration and renovation work.

Peter Paul Rubens is buried in the white sandstone St. Jacob's Church. A painting depicting him as St. George posed between his two wives, Isabella Brant and Helena Fourment, hangs above his tomb. The three-aisle church blends late-Gothic and Baroque styles. The tombs are a who's who of prominent 17th-century Antwerp families.

Nicolaas Rockox and Frans Snijders were pivotal figures in Antwerp's art scene during the Baroque period. Rockox (1560–1640) was Rubens's friend and patron, as well as being seven-time mayor of Antwerp; Snijders (1579–1657) was a skilled painter of animals and still lifes. Together they lived side by side for 20 years in a pair of beautiful town houses on Keizerstraat, which have now been turned into a museum. It was here that humanist and art collector Rockox built an enviable art collection, and on display are two of Rubens's works: one is Madonna en Kind (Madonna and Child), a delicate portrait of Rubens's first wife, Isabella, and their son, Nicolaas, and the other is a sketch for the Kruisiging (Crucifixion). The collection also includes works by Van Dyck, Joachim Patinier, Jordaens, Pieter Bruegel (including his infamous Proverbs), and, of course, Snijders himself. The paintings are shown in the context of a pair of upper-class Baroque homes, furnished in the style of the period. Handheld tablets give you information on each painting.