Antwerp

Antwerp is the second largest city in Belgium, set in the northern region of Flanders. About 500,000 people live in the city itself and around 1.2 million in the wider agglomeration. Thanks to its seaport it was Europe's richest and most important trading town in the 16th century, as well as a major cultural centre and home to artists such as Rubens and van Dyck. Although it suffered heavy damage in both world wars, its historic centre survived largely intact, with monuments and artworks spanning the Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Art Nouveau and Art Deco, including the Cathedral of Our Lady, St. Paul's Church and the Plantin-Moretus Museum.

Antwerp is also the world's leading diamond trading centre, with more than half of all rough and cut diamonds handled here through four exchanges, over 1,500 diamond companies and a diamond museum. The trade has been dominated for centuries by Orthodox Jews, drawn by Belgium's religious tolerance, which has earned the city the nickname the Jerusalem of the West. The city is equally renowned for fashion: in the 1980s the Antwerp Six, graduates of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts including Walter Van Beirendonck, Dries van Noten and Dirk Bikkembergs, shot the city to the centre of international fashion with their unconventional, avant-garde designs, a reputation it still holds today.