108 ANTWERP & ROTTERDAM


Rome, but this one was worthy of any baroque palace with more than 20 different types of marble as well as Doric, Tuscan, Ionic and Corinthian columns, and a source of national pride: the wonderfully eclectic Centraal Station in Antwerp. Designed by Louis Delacenserie, constructed between 1895 and 1905, and boasting a steel canopy over the platforms devised by Clément Van Bogaert, this is a building of such quality and style it is known as the spoorwegkathedraal, the railway cathedral. Grandiose for sure, but regularly


voted the most beautiful railway station in the world, and a monument to transportation that has been protected since 1986 and thoroughly renovated, as part of large-scale reconstruction work over a decade at the start of the century leading to its receiving the Grand Prix Europa Nostra in 2011 – the European Prize for Cultural Heritage. Antwerp boasts another neoclassical building that has been renovated and expanded, this one with vast pillars topped by carved women charioteers above its entrance


facade, the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, another fruit of colonial money that was rebuilt after 1884 and reopened in 1890, built in the days of victory and ostentation, lying spread out, sumptuously at ease, splendid, provocative. Today around 70% of its collection is made up of modern and contemporary work with just 30% being old masters. But what a collection. Flanders had an outsize influence on the history of art, from the 15th and 16th centuries with Jan van Eyck


Left top KAAN Architecten transformed Antwerp’s Royal Museum of Fine Arts


Left centre Sometimes more than 90% of a museum’s collection is hidden from public view


Left bottom The “salon” was coloured dark green because it matched better with the artworks planned for those rooms


Right Antwerp’s Royal Museum of Fine Arts was originally conceived as a “daylight museum”


STIJN BOLLAERT


KARIN BORGHOUTS


MEDIAMIXER


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