While the area around Antwerp has been inhabited since Neolithic times, the place entered history with the arrival of Julius Caesar and his legions in 57 BC. When Rome fell some four hundred years later, the area was overrun by Frankish barbarians. The Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne established a fort at the site of the future city in about the year 800 AD, while Christian missionaries arrived to convert the local people.

Unlike other cities in what became the Duchy of Flanders in 1093, Antwerp didn’t really get started as a going concern until the establishment of guildhalls in the early 16th Century. As with older, richer cities like Burges and Ghent, Antwerp started making money hand over fist with the production and export of cloth. It soon superceded those towns when it was favored by the Hapsburg Emperor, Charles V, and became a major northern European port.

After 1566, Antwerp suffered during the revolt against Spanish Hapsburg rule. Its protestant population, decimated by massacres by Spanish troops, was forced to immigrate north to Holland. Antwerp began a decline soon after with Amsterdam superseding it as the main port of the Low Countries. It passed from Spanish to Austrian to French to Dutch rule throughout the ensuing centuries until becoming the main port of an independent Belgium in 1831. Subsequently, Antwerp grew, especially with the establishment of rail lines with the Belgium capital of Brussels.

Grote Markt

This market square, reserved for pedestrians and bordered by some marvelous Renaissance-style buildings, is the social heart of Antwerp. Two sides of the square are dominated by the facades of some mostly 19th-century towering guildhalls. The house number 7, for instance, is one of the most beautiful. It was the house of the guild of Archers and is crowned by the statue of St. George. In the middle of the square stands the Brabo fountain, with a statue of a legendary Roman soldier Silvius Brabo. The statue was made by sculptor Jef Lambeaux in 1887. According to a legend, a terrible giant, called Druoon Antigoon, lived on the banks of the river Scheldt in ancient times. Whenever sailors on the Scheldt River refused to pay toll to the giant, he punished them by cutting off their hand. Brabo managed to kill the giant. Brabo cut off the hand of the giant and threw the hand away in the river.