Antwerp is a city of many different faces—international diamond hub, emerging fashion center and the home of the painter Peter Paul Rubens. A day in Antwerp offers the chance to explore all this and more, with walks and window-shopping through the Fashion and Diamond Districts, and visits to Rubens’s burial site and house, where he lived and worked alongside famous pupils like van Dyck.
Antwerp is also an ideal base for exploring the myriad other interesting sites around Belgium. Its central location makes it easy to get to the capital, Brussels, and Bruges, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and medieval wonderland. In Ghent, you can see van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, arguably the single most important piece of art in the country. And don’t forget to sample the flavors of Belgium along the way, from sugar dusted Belgian waffles right from the irons of Antwerp’s oldest waffle shop to innovative, modern twists on chocolate from famed Belgian confectionaries.