James Tucker in Cov

The last of the big Flemish cities we visited, we did as a day-trip last summer. The weather was pretty back-and-forth, but we saw the centre of the city without too much rain.
Like the other cities we visited in northern Belgium, Antwerp had a spectacular central square, with guild-houses like those in Brussels. In front of their town hall was a statue of the mythical founder throwing the severed hand of a giant. A fountain of water spurts from the wrist.
There weren't as many medieval buildings as in Bruges or Ghent, I don't think, but there were a few streets that can't have changed much in 600 years. Antwerp's also a much bigger city than Bruges or, I think, Ghent, and so the central area's surrounded by more modern developments from the 1700s to Europe's first proper skyscraper. In the 1500s it had taken over trade and power from Ghent and Bruges, and was one of the largest cities in Europe.
The cathedral, which was never really finished, has a tower 400 feet high, and 400 feet long, and has a couple of Reubens altarpieces inside (he's buried almost nextdoor), but I was more interested in the various pieces of medieval wall-painting which were whitewashed over (presumably during the Reformation),
and which have survived pretty well to this day. The central crossing also has a Ely- like octagon instead of a tower, which looks a lot like the spire of a Russian church from the outside (that said, I've seen a tower like that in Brussels, too).
Instead of being intercut with canals like Bruges or Ghent, Antwerp's on a very large river, and on the banks of that (and amid a pretty unseasonable storm) we saw a castle, neatly decked out with a Roman-style coat of arms, and a statue of a mischevious giant outside. Next to that was a huge brick fleishmarkt, the guildhall of the butchers, which is supposedly meant to look like a piece of bacon. We also wandered past an old printer's museum that was just closing, and through all sorts of squares with odd bars and whatnot.
The exit from Antwerp's pretty dramatic, because the station (which is next to the zoo) is one of the great old steel and stone palaces of the 19th c., but in this case, has been updated for highspeed rail, and for more platforms, by having them added in below. Someone standing in the old ticket hall can look down on three more levels of platforms, the newest and fastest trains pulling in and out of the bottom floor.