A masterpiece museum makes Antwerp ideal for an art-filled city break

Why did it take so long? That is the pressing question about the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, commonly known as KMSKA, which finally reopened at the end of September after an 11-year renovation costing over €100mn.

The answer is that this monumental building, constructed in the 1880s as a grand temple for the arts worthy of a wealthy port on the banks of the River Scheldt, required some serious work to bring it up to 21st-century standards. Out came the asbestos and in went the climate-control systems. Gallery walls have been assiduously painted in olive green and Pompeian red, while a new floor mosaic has been laid down using 60 types of marble. The total exhibition space has been increased by 40 per cent by deftly inserting lofty modern galleries into internal courtyards, their floors so gleamingly white it is like being in an ice rink.

The result is a magnificent new home for the world’s largest collection of Flemish art, one that Luk Lemmens, chair of KMSKA’s board of directors, believes sets it on a par with art heavyweights such as the Rijksmuseum and Prado.

He has a case, for there is plenty to make the head spin with wonder, starting with a huge central gallery devoted to Antwerp’s greatest hero, Peter Paul Rubens. It is fascinating to look at his powerful, 14ft-high, crease-lined canvas “The Last Communion of St Francis of Assisi” and think how in 1794 it was triumphantly carted off to the Louvre by French Republican troops, then proudly brought back following the Battle of Waterloo.

Celebrated works by Jean Fouquet, Rogier van der Weyden and Pieter Bruegel the Younger are by turns startling, extraordinary and engrossing, and there are engaging juxtapositions such as Jan Bruegel the Elder’s “The Tower of Babel” alongside Salvador Dalí’s “Girl Skipping in a Landscape”. Digital screens reveal fascinating backstories, such as how three panels from the 1490s by Hans Memling, which depict 16 flaxen-haired angels with rainbow-hued wings playing heavenly music, languished in a Spanish monastery for centuries before returning to Belgium for a restoration that took 16 years. In the modern sections there are discoveries galore, from the unsettling art of Ostend-born James Ensor to the sensual portraits of women by Rik Wouters, who died in 1916 at the age of 33.

Given that there are 640 works to admire and that a walk through KMSKA’s 50 halls runs to almost 2km, it is impossible to fully appreciate this colossus of Flemish art in a single visit. Fortunately, the museum sits in the thriving neighbourhood of Zuid (South), making it the perfect centrepiece for a stimulating short break, with another two major sights close by — Fotomuseum Antwerp, or FOMU, devoted to the history of photography, and M HKA, the Museum of Modern Art, housed in a former grain silo.

“Twenty-five years ago this wasn’t a nice area,” explains Christophe Ysewyn, owner of the minimalist, 17-room Hotel Pilar that sits on a corner of the leafy Leopold de Waelplaats square that fronts KMSKA. As gentrification spread south from the city centre, new residents discovered streets with delightful Belle Époque and Art Nouveau buildings, including the fanciful Het Bootje (The Little Boat), where an ornate ship’s prow sails above the street.

Among the first to arrive was Ann Demeulemeester, one of the Antwerp Six group of fashion designers, who opened her flagship womenswear store here in 1999, housed in a former school for seamen. Exquisitely tailored menswear followed in 2006 with Bruno Van Gils’ Café Costume, now with five locations along Emiel Banningstraat. There are also abundant private art galleries, with leading curators like Sofie Van de Velde drawing some 500 visitors every weekend.

On the restaurant front, Thomas Snijders, executive chef of Lewis, which sits next to KMSKA, serves comforting dishes such as spaghetti with buttermilk and buckwheat and will shortly open a second venue, Bar Raket, in Bresstraat. Foodies should also seek out the honest, seasonal fare at little-touristed Album, opened two years ago on Vlaamsekaai.

Close to the river, this part of Zuid is centred around a trio of rectangular docks once crammed with small ships. In 1969 these were filled in to make a long, dreary car park that is now being transformed into a mini-version of New York’s Central Park. It will be a tree-lined mix of meadows, water features and recreational areas. A quarter of this verdant transformation is already in place, with completion scheduled for spring 2024.

In Antwerp, the changes may come painfully slowly, but as the rebirth of KMSKA shows, it is invariably worth the wait.

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