Four days in Antwerp: a port city that dresses better than you do

Guild houses with gilded gables on three sides and a city hall of 1565 on the fourth, Gothic bones under an early Renaissance front, which was a new idea north of the Alps. The fountain in the middle shows Silvius Brabo throwing the severed hand of a giant into the river, which is the story the city tells about its own name.

Begun in 1352 and never quite finished: one tower stands at 123 metres, the tallest church tower in the Low Countries, and the second was abandoned at half height. Inside are four Rubens works including the Raising of the Cross and the Descent from the Cross, painted for these walls and taken to Paris by Napoleon before they came back.

A medieval lane reached through an unmarked door on the Oude Koornmarkt, and easy to walk past for years. Whitewashed walls, lanterns, a few restaurants and a courtyard or two. It takes five minutes to walk and is one of the few genuinely hidden things in a well-trodden city.

A bar that looks shut from the outside and holds several hundred beers, a good number of them aged ten years or more in the cellar. No music, no hurry, and a proprietor who will tell you what to drink if you describe what you like.

The streets north and east of the cathedral do mussels, shrimp croquettes and steak without the square's prices. Book at weekends, and ask for a bolleke while you read the menu.

The oldest building in Antwerp, a stone gatehouse of the 13th century that is all that survives of the river castle. It holds the city visitor centre and a walk-through history of the port, and the terrace outside is the best free view of the Scheldt at the point where it is widest.

The old dock quarter north of the centre has spent twenty years turning warehouses into places to eat. Anything on the Willemdok or the Bonapartedok will do, and the walk between them is the point.

The sheds where emigrants were washed, checked and processed before boarding for New York. Two million people passed through here between 1873 and 1934, Einstein and Irving Berlin among them, and the museum tells it through their luggage, their papers and their letters home. Quietly devastating, and the best hour in the city.

Ten storeys of red Indian sandstone and curved glass, stacked like crates, holding a museum about Antwerp and the world. The spiral of escalators to the roof is free and open late, so you can skip the collections entirely and still get the view over the port and the river at sunset.

A baroque church on a small quiet square, plain outside and extravagant within, built by the Jesuits with Rubens involved in the design and the decoration. Thirty-nine ceiling paintings by him burnt in 1718; what is left includes the marble, the Lady chapel and a sacristy of vestments still in use.

A Dominican church, Gothic inside a baroque shell, five minutes north of the market square and usually almost empty. Rubens, van Dyck and Jordaens all painted for it and their work is still on the walls. Outside is the Calvary garden, a rock grotto crowded with life-size statues that is either moving or deeply strange depending on the weather.

Reopened after more than a decade of work that hid a whole white modern museum inside the 19th century one. Van Eyck, Memling, Bruegel, Rubens and van Dyck downstairs, and upstairs the largest collection of James Ensor in the world, masks and skeletons and all. Three hours is comfortable, two is enough.

Reopened in 2022 after eleven years of work that hid a whole white modern museum inside the 19th century one. Van Eyck, Memling, Bruegel, Rubens and van Dyck downstairs, and upstairs the largest collection of James Ensor in the world, masks and skeletons and all. Three hours is comfortable, two is enough.

The house, workshop and shop of Christophe Plantin, the printer who supplied half of Europe in the 16th century, kept as a working building rather than a display. Two of the oldest printing presses in the world, cases of type, the proofreaders' room, the family's Rubens portraits and the account books. The only museum on the UNESCO list in its own right.

Four streets beside the station through which most of the world's rough diamonds pass. The bourses are closed to visitors and the interest is the street: security cameras on every corner, traders talking in half a dozen languages, and shop windows that make the Meir look modest. Photographs of people are not welcome.

Antwerp Central is worth arriving early for: a stone hall of 1905 with a dome, a gilded clock and marble in twenty colours, and three levels of platforms bored underneath it. Look up from the top level before you go down.