Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp

Stand at the foot of the wide stone steps for a moment. The square around you is open and airy, with trams sliding past and café chairs scraping on the pavement. Above you, the pale facade rises in columns and arches. Look right up to the roofline. Against the sky, bronze horses pull chariots forward, as if the building itself is about to move. This is the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, known locally by its initials, KMSKA.

The neighbourhood you are standing in is called Het Zuid, which simply means The South. In the nineteenth century, this part of the city held docks and working quays. Later the docks were filled in, and a new district of broad avenues and grand houses grew in their place. The museum was planned as the centrepiece of that new quarter. It opened in 1890, a confident statement from a port city that wanted the world to see its art.

The building follows a neoclassical style. That means it borrows the language of ancient Greece and Rome — columns, symmetry, triangular gables, a sense of calm order. Its architects were Jacob Winders and Frans van Dijk. Notice how the whole structure faces outward, almost like a temple. In its day, a museum was meant to feel like a place of ceremony. You climbed the steps slowly, and you entered a different world.

Here is something many visitors do not realise. For more than a decade, this museum was closed. The doors shut in 2011 for a major renovation, and they did not open again until 2022. For eleven years, the people of Antwerp walked past scaffolding and wondered what was happening inside. Much of the collection travelled to other museums during that time, while the building was rebuilt from within.

What happened inside is the real surprise. The Dutch firm KAAN Architecten restored the historic galleries, with their rich coloured walls and natural light from above. But they also built something entirely new in the old inner courtyards. It is a bright white world of tall, quiet rooms and long staircases. Some people call it a vertical museum. Walking from the old rooms into the new ones feels a little like stepping from a palace into a cloud.

The heart of the collection begins with the Flemish Primitives. The name sounds odd today. It does not mean simple or crude. It refers to the painters of the fifteenth century in the Low Countries, who were among the first in Europe to master oil paint. They painted with extraordinary precision — every jewel, every fold of cloth, every hair on a dog. Bring your eyes close, and you will see details almost too small to believe.

Look out for a small panel by Jan van Eyck showing Saint Barbara. It is unfinished. The saint sits in front of a huge Gothic tower that is still being built, with tiny workers around its base. Because the painting was never completed, you can see the artist's underdrawing. It is a rare chance to look over the shoulder of a master. Close by, you may find Hans Memling's long panels of Christ surrounded by angels playing music.

Another painting stops many people in their tracks. It is a Madonna by the French painter Jean Fouquet, once part of a pair of panels. The Virgin sits with pale, almost marble skin. Around her crowd angels in bright red and deep blue, colours that look startlingly modern. According to a long-told story, the model for the Virgin was a famous lady of the French court. Whatever the truth, the image feels strange and unforgettable.

Of course, this is Antwerp, and Antwerp means Rubens. In the early seventeenth century, Peter Paul Rubens ran a busy workshop here in the city. His paintings are full of movement — twisting bodies, rippling fabric, warm skin, dramatic light. The museum holds a strong group of his works, alongside paintings by his younger colleagues Anthony van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens. Stand back from the large canvases. Rubens painted them to be seen from a distance, filling a church or a great hall.

Now jump forward almost three centuries. The museum holds the largest collection in the world of works by James Ensor. He was a Belgian painter from the coastal town of Ostend, born in the mid nineteenth century. Ensor loved masks, skeletons, carnival crowds and sharp, acid colour. His work can be funny, unsettling and sad all at once. Many critics see him as an early voice of modern art, long before his ideas became fashionable.

As you walk on, the collection moves into the twentieth century. You will meet Belgian artists such as Rik Wouters, whose paintings glow with sunlight and domestic calm. You may also find René Magritte, the Belgian surrealist who painted everyday objects in impossible situations. The mood of the rooms changes with the art. The old galleries feel warm and deep. The new white spaces feel cool and open, giving modern works room to breathe.

Take your time with the building itself, too. Look at how daylight falls from the ceilings in the historic rooms. Notice the colours of the walls, chosen to make old gold frames and dark varnish shine. Listen to the sound changing between the high stone halls and the quieter modern rooms. A visit here is not only about famous names. It is about how light, space and silence shape the way you see a painting.

When you step back outside, pause again on the steps. The square opens before you, with its trees, its trams and its rows of elegant houses. Once this ground held ships and cargo. Now it holds cafés, galleries and people simply sitting in the sun. Look up one last time at those bronze chariots on the roof, still racing toward the sky... and carry a little of what you saw inside with you into the streets of Antwerp.