Category: News

Urban Trail

Sunday March 12, Antwerp will be a busy place, visited by thousands of runners, since the 5th edition of the Urban Trail will be run. 10,000 participants will run the 10 km long circuit that takes them through the city and its buildings. Last year the athletes ran through the City Hall that celebrated its 450th birthday. This year the athletes will be able to run through the new Harbour House, a project worked out by the recently deceased architect Zaha Hadid, a construction that seems to form a kind of missing link between a ship and a diamond, two important symbols for Antwerp’s wealth.

Since the Harbour House is quite a bit north of city centre, the circuit will be quite different from previous editions.

If you want to participate, you can subscribe through www.urbantrailseries.be , but don’t wait too long as recent editions have sold out in less than two weeks. More details of the circuit will be disclosed bit by bit, and everything can be followed on the site mentioned.

Six weeks later, Antwerp will again welcome athletes by the thousands, as then the 10 Miles race is scheduled.

Red and Blue renamed Cargo Club

Antwerp has a very lively night-life, with two very popular discotheques bordering north of the historical city centre.

Foto: kioni papadopoulos, rr

In the middle of the red light quarter (Schipperskwartier) you’ll find “Café d’Anvers”. Situated in Verversrui the building once housee the popular cinema Ritz, where the poor of the neighbourhood used to hang out the whole afternoon no matter which movie was on the program to save on heating costs in their two room flats, but now welcomes trendy crowds of visitors every weekend.

A bit further on in the Lange Schipperskapelstraat, “Red and Blue” can be found. This last one was very popular with the holebi-population of Flanders. From the middle of January 2017 on, “Red and Blue” will be renamed “Cargo Club” and cater for all kinds of public. Every now and then special holebi-events will be staged under the old “Red and Blue” logo.

Source (text and picture): GVA 

Busy times for archeologists

Should you visit Antwerp later this year, you will undoubtedly be confronted with road works and the like, which results in traffic problems every now and then, but don’t forget that every cloud has a silver lining.

Our silver lining is that the road works in the Opera quarter and in the South quarter will teach us a lot about the town’s history, and not only that: parts of the city’s history that have lain hidden for hundreds of years will again become visible. One more reason to come and visit Antwerp.

The Antwerp Opera is built along  a city boulevard that in the sixteenth century was an enormous defensive wall. Recently Rough Guide chose Antwerp as its #5 city to visit in 2017, in the 16th century, an Italian named Guiccardini advised each and every European to visit Antwerp and its defensive wall. The people of Antwerp usually refer to this wall as the Spaanse Vesten (Spanish Walls) as the Netherlands then were part of the reign of Charles V and his son Filip II.

In the 19th century these walls no longer served a defensive role and in stead were a hindrance in the development of the city which was booming thanks to the newly (re)started harbour activities, so the walls were broken down. Fortunately they were only demolished up to ground level: the basements underground were left intact and archeological studies now are revealing these impressive works.

Part of an old bastion in the Spanish Walls laid bare.
This is what the Opera Square will look like when all the works are finished.

Source: Gazet van Antwerpen

Antwerp is getting smart

Yesterday (Jan. 5 2017) the city authorities and the Flemish government announced Antwerp is going to be the first smart city in Flanders. In cooperation with IMEC, an organisation of IT-departments of Flemish univerities, the city of Antwerp is going to integrate smart sensors in hundreds of objects: waste baskets, sewers, delivery vans, traffic lights, …

Sensors in waste baskets can trigger messages to warn it is time to come and collect the waste. Sensors in the sewers can monitor the quality of rain water, which yields a lot of information about the quality of the environment in general, sensors in delivery vans can measure the quality of the air in the city, sensors combined with traffic lights deliver information which can be used to steer traffic flows in an optimal way, …

All the data collected allow for a more efficient organisation of city life and as the system is an open system anyone can use them to build his own apps.

Antwerp is the first city in Europe to host such a system, which in time will be rolled out in all Flemish cities, says Flemish Minister of Innovations Philippe Muyters.

Source: Gazet van Antwerpen

Antwerp among top 5 destinations

The British travel guide publisher ‘Rough Guide to…’ has put Antwerp on the #5 spot of its ‘Top 10 Best Cities to Visit’ for the new year. It praises our city for its gorgeous architecture, for its many museums, its bars, its harbour, its fashion stores, … More than one reason to visit the city, which is worth a stay of a few days.

Another feature that is mentioned is its size: Antwerp is not as immense and overpowering as New York, Tokyo, Paris, London, … but still large enough ‘to offer all the exitement of a big metropolis’.

More information on Antwerp on The Rough Guide. To see the list of Top 10 destinations, click here.

To make your visit to this website as smooth as possible we use cookies. The cookies are used for statistical reasons and do not store any personal data. If you do not wish to use cookies. You can indicate this by clicking on the No button.