Exotic Antwerp has retained the feel of a bygone era

Antwerp, Belgium  - The setting sun bathes Antwerp's diamond district in ruby-red light. Standing outside a diamond exchange are black-clad Hasidic Jews wearing high hats, some fur-trimmed, and sporting side locks curled like corkscrews. They are discussing business in Yiddish.

"Jerusalem on the Scheldt" is one of the many nicknames for the city, which shows visitors a different face in every district.

Only London, Paris and Naples were more populous than Antwerp in the 16th century, which then had more than 100,000 inhabitants. The Welsers and Fuggers, German merchant and banking dynasties, controlled their businesses from the Flemish metropolis.

In 1520, German painter Albrecht Duerer arrived in Antwerp from Nuremberg, sketched the barks and caravels in the harbour, and climbed the tower of the Cathedral of Our Lady. Mainly, though, he went shopping for pretty things lacking back home.

Antwerp, then Europe's leading commercial centre, was called "the world's likeness" because Spaniards and Portuguese amassed treasures there from both the Old World and New.

Testifying to the wealth of the "Sinjoren," the patricians of Antwerp's past, are the Town Hall and Guild Houses on the Grote Markt, the main square, which are decorated with stepped gables and gold-gilded statues.

The Grote Markt is a good starting point for an aimless walk through the narrow streets of the historic city centre, where you can discover many hidden places. There are lovely squares like Hendrik Conscienceplein, site of a Baroque church that Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens had a hand in designing. There is the Oude Beurs or old exchange, with its enchanting arcades, and the Vlaeykensgang, a winding cobblestone alleyway.

But Antwerp is also a large modern city that Belgians, and also the Dutch, appreciate mainly for its shops, fashion and night life. Nowhere in the Benelux countries are rents as high as on the Meir, a shopping street with palatial department stores dating from the Belle Epoque.

Around 1900, the French-speaking Belgian upper class referred to Brussels, the capital, merely as "la capitale." High-class Antwerp, however, was "la metropole." At that time, ivory and rubber from the Belgian Congo were unloaded in the harbour. Nowadays, the haute volee shops for cocktail dresses and handbags on the Meir and its adjoining streets.

Beckoning amid the bars, delicatessens and stores selling Armani, Versace and Cartier are chocolatiers, as everywhere in Belgium. The latest rage is chocolates coated with real gold.

"Gold is edible and easy to digest," said a saleswoman reassuringly.

One of the most renowned chocolate makers is Burie, which is part of a small chain and lies in the pedestrian-only Wilde Zee district. A couple of doors down, long queues form outside the old-fashioned bakery Goossens on Fridays and Saturdays. A splendid setting for a cup of tea is the lounge in the Bourla Theatre.

Belgian cuisine is generally good, but Antwerp has the added benefit of a rich ethnic mix. Though its inhabitants number fewer than half a million, they represent some 170 nations.

The most striking group is the 20,000 mainly orthodox Jews in the diamond district, home to 1,500 diamond-industry companies and four diamond exchanges. Antwerp remains the most important diamond centre in the world by far. Jews once completely dominated the business but now have competition, particularly from Indians. As a result, about a quarter of Antwerp's Jews live in poverty.

The district itself makes a rather foreboding impression. But you should not let that deter you. Experienced guides can be booked at gidsenwerking@stad.antwerpen.be. They give tourists insights into life behind the scenes and often include a visit to a synagogue in their tours.

Hasidic Jews, especially, hew to the commandments as found in the Torah. "For us, to be orthodox means we still obey the commandments that were revealed to us 3,000 years ago on Mount Sinai," explained Simone Wenger in the Shmore Hadas Synagogue, where she and her husband were married.

It goes without saying that Wenger, before her marriage, did not even hold her fiancé's hand. Hasidic men and women live in strict separation and go to separate schools and clubs.

"We pray apart, we dance apart, we fish apart," she said.

A shiny high-rise hotel was recently built on the edge of the Jewish quarter. Over breakfast on Sunday mornings, its guests look down, as if from a spaceship that has just landed, on a scene straight out of the 19th century: Hasidic fathers take their sons to school through narrow streets.

This is how it must have been in many European cities. But it has survived only in Antwerp, the "world's likeness."

Internet: www. antwerpen. be (dpa)

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