The waiting hall
A gilded dome, twenty marbles and a royal staircase.
Paul Hermans โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท Giles Laurent โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Giles Laurent โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Giles Laurent โ CC BY-SA 4.0
Directly behind the station (Hoveniersstraat and the neighbouring streets): Antwerp has traded 80% of the world's rough diamonds since the sixteenth century, and the quarter is dense with jewellers and diamond exchanges โ visited for browsing and buying (check certificates). The DIVA museum in the old town tells the story. The quarter is quiet on Saturdays (the Jewish Sabbath).
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Antwerp Central Station is regularly ranked among the world's most beautiful railway stations โ the "railway cathedral": a grand waiting hall of 1905 with a gilded dome, twenty kinds of stone and marble and a majestic royal staircase, and the platform hall with its soaring glass-and-iron roof (186 metres long, 44 high) resembling the nave of an industrial church. Its modernity lies in its conversion (1998โ2009): new floors were dug beneath the old terminus so it now has four levels of platforms through which high-speed trains pass underground โ while the old hall above stayed as it was. Standing at the centre, you see the platforms descending in tiers beneath you and trains leaving in every direction: a sight like no other station. Free and always open, with the zoo beside it and the diamond quarter behind โ 40 minutes from Brussels, and a reason to alight in itself.
A gilded dome, twenty marbles and a royal staircase.
Four levels descending beneath you โ a unique sight.
A soaring iron-and-glass roof like an industrial nave.
Koningin Astridplein 27, 2018 Antwerp