Not to miss

Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten

Antwerp has a wealth of museums and galleries that collectively form a historic panorama of the changing moods of this city. In the district of Het Zuid (usually shortened to 't Zuid and meaning 'the south') is Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Royal Museum of Fine Arts) holding a phenomenal collection from the 14th century to contemporary times.

The awesome collection of paintings affixed to the walls of this striking neoclassical building includes masterworks from the 15th-century Flemish likes of Jan Van Eyck and Rogier Van der Weyden, from 17th-century exponents of baroque like Rubens and Antoon Van Dyck, and from more recent creative types like James Ensor, Constant Permeke and surrealist René Magritte.

Mode Museum (MoMu)

This excellent Fashion Museum has two five-month-long exhibitions a year, generally curated in conjunction with designers, to explore, through themes, the social and cultural context of their inspiration and work. Housed in a suitably stylish building it also contains a huge library of fashion and design related materials.

Museum Plantin-Moretus

The city's finest museum in the former grand home of a prosperous 16th- and 17th-century printing family tells us as much about how they lived, through its exquisite architecture, interiors and decorative arts, as it does about early printing.

Built around a central courtyard, the museum is worth visiting for the mansion alone, but also for the insight it gives into old typesetting, proofreading and printing processes. The rooms are filled with ancient presses, copper plates, old globes, Flemish tapestries and, of course, splendid manuscripts, including a rare copy of the Gutenberg Bible. In an age of email, it's hard not to admire the painstaking effort and dedication that was then needed to produce a 'simple' book.