Antwerp Central Station
Interesting facts
- A V-2 rocket strike during the Second World War left a permanent wave-shaped warp in the train hall roof that is still visible today.
- The polycarbonate panels fitted in the 1986 restoration weigh about 40 percent less than glass, sparing the old roof from needing extra support pillars.
- The train hall was built so tall largely to let the smoke of steam locomotives rise and disperse.
- Antwerp's very first station, opened in 1836 as the terminus of the line from Brussels via Mechelen, was a simple wooden building.
- A plaque on the north wall still bears the old Dutch name Middenstatie, meaning Middle Station, an expression now out of use.
- The deepest platforms lie about 18 metres below street level, where through trains run in a tunnel beneath the city.
- The conversion into a through station won a Grand Prix at the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Awards in 2011.
- In W. G. Sebald's novel Austerlitz, the protagonist's analysis of the station's many styles shows off his brilliance as an architectural historian.
- The square in front of the station was renamed Koningin Astridplein in 1935 in memory of the recently deceased Queen Astrid.
Why it is worth it
Antwerp's main station was built to impress, and it still does. Architect Louis Delacenserie designed the passenger building between 1895 and 1905 as a monumental hall crowned by a dome some 75 metres high, and the people of the city soon named it the spoorwegkathedraal, the railway cathedral. Delacenserie, who called his own manner a baroque-medieval eclecticism, is said to have borrowed the idea of the dome from the Pantheon in Rome and the overall arrangement from the then brand-new station at Lucerne. The result is often ranked among the most beautiful stations anywhere: Newsweek placed it fourth in the world in 2009, and Mashable put it first in 2014.
Inside, the building is a feast of stone. Over twenty kinds of marble line the ticket hall and the grand staircases, and columns of every classical order — Doric, Tuscan, Ionic and Corinthian — carry galleries and arches beneath the dome. It feels less like a transport interchange than the entrance to a palace, which was exactly the intention in a port city grown rich at the end of the 19th century.
Behind the stone building stretches the iron and glass train shed engineered by Clément Van Bogaert, 185 metres long and 44 metres high, covering some 12,000 square metres. It survived hits from V-2 rockets during the Second World War but was worn enough by the 1980s to need a thorough restoration of roof and façades; lighter polycarbonate panels replaced much of the glass. Then came the most ingenious chapter of its life. For more than a century the station was a terminus, and trains had to reverse out of it; between 1998 and 2007 a tunnel was driven beneath the city and the station was rebuilt on four levels, so that high-speed trains now run straight through deep below the historic tracks instead of turning back. Few stations anywhere combine a 19th-century showpiece and a modern through-station so completely in one building.
It is worth coming even without a train to catch. The station is not a museum but a working hub in daily use, and much of its pleasure lies in seeing the grand hall doing the job it was built for.
Getting there
Antwerpen-Centraal lies in central Antwerp, on the edge of the Borgerhout district, with trains across Belgium and international high-speed services on its fourteen tracks. The closest airport is Antwerp International Airport (ANR), about 4 km away.
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From the encyclopaedia
Antwerpen-Centraal railway station is the main railway station in Antwerp, Belgium. It is one of the most important hubs in the country and is one of the four Belgian stations on the high-speed rail network. From 1873 to early 2007, it was a terminal station. The current building, designed by the architect Louis Delacenserie, was constructed between 1895 and 1905. On 23 March 2007, a tunnel with two continuous tracks was opened under part of the city and under the station. The train services are operated by the National Railway Company of Belgium (NMBS/SNCB).
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