7. Rubens’ House (Rubenshuis)
Peter Paul Rubens acquired No. 9 in 1610 — a year after his marriage to Isabella Brant – living there until his death in 1640. He arranged the house to his own taste and requirements, making his home to the left of the entrance and turning the right wing into his studio.
Following the French Revolution it was used as a prison, thereafter falling more and more into disrepair. Rubens’ House (Rubenshuis) finally came into the possession of the City of Antwerp in 1937 and, between 1939 and 1946, was meticulously restored with the aid of old documents and drawings.
The ten rooms are furnished in the style of the period and contain numerous original paintings. These include works by Rubens (self-portrait, ca. 1625/28, in the dining room) as well as by Snyders, Jan Bruegel, Veronese, Jordaens, and Otto Venius. The large studio contains several more works by Rubens (Adam and Eve in Paradise) and others by his pupils
Address: Wapper 9-11, Antwerp
8. Museum Mayer van den Bergh
In the course of only a short period during the 1890s, a connoisseur of the fine arts, Fritz Mayer van den Bergh, assembled a remarkable collection of more than 3,000 items. These are now displayed on four floors of a Neo-Gothic house at Lange Gasthuisstraat 19 known as the Museum Mayer van den Bergh. The collection includes some superlative works of art, among them paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, (Dulle Griet and the earliest of the artist’s signed works The Twelve Proverbs, both in Room 26), Rubens, Jordaens, Bouts, van der Weyden, van Ostade, Lucas Cranach, and Quentin Massys.
Also of great interest are the Flemish and French religious statues, the outstanding collection of ivories, and a unique 16th-century Flemish breviary, and in Room 14, a polychrome group Christ with St. John (1300) by Henry of Constance and a Netherlands diptych (ca. 1400). The second floor features a collection of porcelain, while 17th-century furniture and paintings occupy the third.
Address: Lange Gasthuisstraat 19, Antwerp
