MeterEvery country has a city, sometimes more than one. It has gained a worldwide reputation and at the same time is an overlooked destination for busy tourists.exist EuropeThese cities are often places with a long history, evolving into industrial, commercial or trading centers. Cities such as Hamburg, Lyon and Turin may be viewed in this way.
In Belgium, Antwerp is one of the most striking examples of this fame and fortune phenomenon. Antwerp is one of the greatest historical cities in Europe.In a highly readable new BookAccording to Michael Pye, it has also become one of the earliest truly global cities in the age of discovery in Europe. For most of the 16th century, Paris, New York, or London became such a place in later times, a place full of uneasy wealth and vitality, as Mr. Pye said, anything can happen, or at least anything can be believed .
In what he called Antwerp’s glorious years, it was a city at a crossroads. Albrecht Dürer travel From Nuremberg, I saw Aztec gold there, bought ultramarine dye made from lapis lazuli mined in Afghanistan, and drew his first African from his life. There were more blacks living in Antwerp in the 16th century than in any European city outside Lisbon, and many of them must have originally arrived here as slaves. Pieter Bruegel used this city as a model for his painting “The Tower of Babel.”When Thomas Moore wrote Utopia In 1515, a sailor described his imaginary island of reason and justice for the first time in a conversation that took place in the garden of Peter Gillis, the real town secretary at the time in Antwerp.
The city on the Scheldt has always been the British, especially London’s economic, cultural and strategic center. Antwerp is where British traders sell wool to Europe. Its printing press produced many of the earliest English books, especially the English Bible, which were smuggled back to the North Sea through the Tudor censorship agency. The translator was William Tyndale, who worked in hiding in Antwerp until his arrest and execution in 1536.A century later, Peter Paul Rubens Lived Even when he painted the ceiling of the Whitehall Ballroom, he was in this city.
Napoleon also saw the importance of Antwerp to England. He once said that if a fleet can be assembled on the Scheldt, the river will be “a loaded gun”, pointing directly to London on the Thames. Anxiety about this threat ensured that Britain played a key diplomatic role in establishing Belgian independence and neutrality in the 1830s—a promise that would help involve Britain in World War I.
Today, Antwerp is a vast, busy and charming place. Parts of England are less than a day’s drive away. However, it received a small number of tourists flocking to nearby Bruges. It rarely appears on the lifetime travel list. In the era of the so-called globalized Britain, this country seems to have forgotten its connection with the global Antwerp. However, if we learn more about Antwerp, we may learn more about ourselves and our long-term ties with Europe.
