Antwerp is the centre of the global diamond industry, and has been for centuries, which is quite a boast.
Over 85% of the world's supply passes through the city on the way "from the mine to your finger", thanks to a concentration of skilled diamond cutters and four separate trading exchanges to help sell them on. The diamond district lies immediately alongside the central station, literally across the road, where dozens of tiny jewellers offer the ultimate in window shopping. Their shelves sparkle, their jewellery is generally unpriced, and every so often a pair of hands appears behind the glass to tweak the display. A lot of the businesses are Jewish, as the occasional burst of Hebrew confirms, but everyone is welcome to browse and buy if their pockets are deep enough.
A lot of the most important trading places are in Hoveniersstraat, an otherwise insignificant backstreet except that it's barriered at both ends, a double dogleg ensures that nobody in any connecting street can see what's going on and the army have two trucks parked in the centre just in case. I decided against taking any photos. The district is branded with 'DnA' banners, this supposedly standing for 'Diamonds & Antwerp', and was amok with ring hunters scouting for a good deal. And OK, because it was the middle of August a lot of the dealers were on a fortnight's holiday and their shutters were firmly down, but even a diamond geezer like myself could sense I'd only scratched the surface.
In order to capitalise on the city's reputation and attract more fashionista tourists, a brand new museum called DIVA opened last year halfway between the cathedral and the river. It describes itself as "a cocoon of luxury and extravagance, filled with diamonds, jewellery and silverware", or in other words it's a museum of bling. Visitors are offered a headset on the way in, indeed it's essential, with instructions to point and click at the special symbols beside the cases to discover more. Sometimes the audio tracks deliver factual content and sometimes contextual fiction imagining who the wearer might have been. A digital butler called Jerome butts in and talks to you every time you enter a new room. Essentially you're here to look and listen, not to read.
The first room was full of dazzling jewellery in tiny cases, so I listened to a few stories but thought I'd better press on in case I ran out of time. The second room purported to be a Workshop but was really just half a dozen sit-down touchscreens explaining the tools of the trade so I walked straight through. I listened to one of the international stories in room 3 but baulked at a nine and a half minute playing time on the next so moved on. The Dining Room was beautifully laid out but mostly silverware, and then... oh, it turned out there wasn't much upstairs. The Vault only really looked the part from the entrance, and the final Boudoir ended with an opportunity to take a quiz and email myself a selfie. I got very little out of my DIVA experience, and suspect that even at half speed I'd still have left disappointed.
That's the 'Museum By The River', but in Dutch, or MAS for short. It too is a recent creation, born in 2011 when the city sought to close two musty old museums and erect instead an architectural statement to revitalise the dockside. What they created was a ten-storey block clad in Indian red sandstone, with a spiral of curved glass panels winding upwards level by level. The exterior looks equallystriking from any angle, and the contents outweigh DIVA any day of the week... Mondays excepted.
Between floors two and eight every level is its own huge exhibition gallery, with the former Maritime Museum having decamped to the sixth floor and the Etnografisch Museum to the seventh. Other layers major on sustainable food, rites of passage and Pre-Columbian art. My favourite by far was the temporary exhibition across Level 3 devoted to Le Corbusier, specifically the new town he wasn't allowed to build in Antwerp and the thriving city he bequeathed to Chandigarh in India. It closes today, sorry. Generally you're only allowed inside the galleries if you've paid for a wristband, but one or two have free admission, and it's also free to walk up inside the building to the roof.
The pathway to the top is fabulous, each set of escalators leading to an long atrium, three walls of which are ripplingglass, presenting a different elevation across the city with each quarter rotation. But the best panorama is from the open rooftop, Antwerp having very few other tall buildings to get in the way. From here you can fully appreciate the sweep of the river, the vast extent of the adjacentport, a few spires in the city centre and suburbia spreading to the horizon. I thank the designer with the foresight to drill one small porthole in the centre of each glass barrier to allow non-reflective camera shots in each compass direction. Of all Antwerp's museums, I spent the longest time here.
Not the White Star Line, owners of the Titanic, but a separate American company which shipped passengers across the Atlantic between 1874 and 1934. The Red Star Line chose Antwerp as their European base and the museum is housed in their former offices close to the northern dockside. But if you're expecting the exhibits to be about ocean liners the true story turns out to be something distinctly more human, the flow of migrants from Eastern Europe and Russia to the United States and Canada. It's a fascinating (and familiar) tale, not least America's changing point of view from 'as many as you like' to 'we need to screen everyone in advance' to 'no more immigrants thanks'. Many of those rejected ended up staying in Antwerp and changed the city forever.
The whole thing's really well presented, and the English language handout which enables you read some of the Dutch information panels doubles as a gorgeous souvenir. I finished my circuit feeling educated, enlightened and engaged. And then I walked up the observation tower via six loops of spiralling concrete steps to an open platform (or you can be dull and take the lift). From up here you get a fine view of riverside cranes and warehouses, but also ongoing demolition as the dockland periphery regenerates. It was also from here that I finally got to glimpse Zaha Hadid's startling Port House, a 100m-long crystallineoffice block dumped on the roof of a former fire station to shimmering effect. The diamond city now boasts another gem.
By yomping round Antwerp and not stopping for anything as unnecessary as lunch, I managed to fit in visits to five museums and one cathedral during my seven hour stay. That's six admission fees saved by buying an Antwerp City Card, plus no need for a one-day travel pass, meaning I got €59 of value for a €27 outlay. At current exchange rates that's £25 spent and £30 saved, which is top touristing (but come soon before sterling slips too much further).
