Around 970 Antwerp became a border town of the German empire.
Fortifications were necessary and a wooden fort was built, which was
later replaced by a stone stronghold (het Steen) with a surrounding
wall. Antwerp became a margraviate (a border province) of the Holy
Roman Empire of the German Nation. The border was the River Scheldt and
the County of Flanders lay across the river.
On the south side of the city St. Norbert founded St. Michael's Abbey
in the 12th Century. The canons of the little church on this side of
the city moved to the northern nucleus where they founded a new parish
around a Church of Our Lady - the forerunner of the Cathedral of Our
Lady. The city, which was now part of the Duchy of Brabant, continued
to expand in concentric circles with successive bulwarks, which can
still be identified in the city's street pattern today.
A first economic boom followed in the first half of the fourteenth
century. Antwerp became the most important trading and financial centre
in Western Europe; its reputation was based largely on its seaport and
its wool market. In 1356 the city was annexed to the County of Flanders
and lost many of its privileges, among others to Bruges' advantage.
Some fifty years later the political and economic tide turned again and
the run-up to the Golden Age began, during which Antwerp developed into
a world class metropolis at every level: almost like a sixteenth-
century Manhattan. It was this centre of trade and culture, which
Florentine resident Lodovico Guicciardini described as 'the loveliest
city in the world'. Well-known names from that age are the painters
Quinten Metsys and Bruegel, the printer Plantijn, the humanists and
scientists Lipsius, Mercator, Dodoens and Ortelius.
In the second half of that century the city gradually became the focus of the politico-religious struggle between the Protestant North and Catholic Spain and as such it suffered a series of all-time lows including the iconoclasm (1566), the Spanish Fury (1576) and finally the Fall of Antwerp (1585). After the fall the city again came under the rule of the Spanish King Philip II and the Northern Netherlands closed off the Scheldt. From an economic point of view this was a disaster. To make matters worse, it was not only the Protestants who fled the city but also the commercial and intellectual elite. Of the city's 100 000 inhabitants in 1570, by 1590 no more than about 40,000 remained. Yet the city continued to flourish culturally until the mid-seventeenth century with painters like Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens and Teniers, the sculptor families Quellin and Verbrugghen, printers like Moretus, the renowned Antwerp harpsichord builders, etc.
There's little cause for joy in the history of Antwerp between 1650 and the nineteenth century. The Scheldt remained closed to traffic and the metropolis became a provincial town. Under Austrian rule (1715 - 1792) Joseph II tried to free the river by military force, but the plan backfired. In 1795, the French occupants succeeded in opening the river again, but this time the ships encountered an English blockade. This was hardly surprising since Napoleon thought of the Port of Antwerp as 'a pistol aimed at the heart of England'. Whilst it is true that Antwerp owes the beginnings of today's port to that French period (1792 - 1815), at the same time the city's cultural heritage fell prey to art plundering and destruction on a scale rarely seen before. There were even plans to pull down the Cathedral.
After the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo (1815), a short-lived reunification with the Northern Netherlands and an equally short period of prosperity followed, which ended with the Belgian Revolution (1830) and once again the closure of the River Scheldt. It was reopened, this time definitively, in 1863. Then Antwerp's third great hey-day could begin.
Apart from interruptions during the two world wars, Antwerp experienced steady economic growth in the 20th Century. This gave rise to a new cultural high point and international prestige in 1993, the year Antwerp was nominated Cultural Capital of Europe: European recognition for a wealth of historical and contemporary aspects in which you too can share. Antwerp has something for everybody's taste:
