Travel Tips

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Het Hessenhuis has a changing collection of exhibitions.
At the Summer of 2002 it had the exhibition of City at the border of the river, a division of a combined exhibition, with other locations at Het Steen en Het Volkskundemuseum.

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Another piece of the original fence and behind it a part of the nice collection b/w pictures that covers the latest history of the Antwerp harbour.
When the MAS will be there, all will be available there.

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Here you see a scale model of the most inventive lock of that time.
It has two seperate segments (doors) that are sliding.
So far doors opened like a regular door, but that was not practical in this case with the tides, whenever a boat would leave the docks at low tide, the docks would empty.
These double sliding doors prevented this.

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This is a maquette of how the future MAS (Museum Aan de Stroom) would look like.
It is situated at the North at the first docks.
They want to make a panoramic upper level on this building so you can have a nice overlook of the area.

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The different departments of the harbour workers had their union or organisation.
This is the banner of the ones of the crane workers.

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And another banner of the crane workers.

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Antwerp dock workers: the best in the world!
Don't let them take your job away!!!
Dockworkers, you have been on 3 major strikes before, that is what I learned from the pictures telling your history...
Now you are facing a 4th crisis, a 4th strike.

Show the world your pride to be an Antwerp dockworker! Show them your teeth!

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Antwerp was the harbour where the Belgians started their trip on the Red Star.
This ship brought them to the Titannic, for all, except 5 their last trip.

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people giving work and people looking for work...
they started to found "naties".
There has been different Naties, some of which names refered to the kind of products they were handling, others refering to the location where they were settled.

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At the attick of the Hessenhouse we could view a sort of puzzle where you can see in different colours, the different levels of development of the harbour.
The years are put on each piece.
Very interesting!
The river flows from the right to the left.

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More detailed picture of the "puzzle map".

I hope this short introduction was interesting and can make you curious to visit for real!

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I took a few pictures inside, which you are not supposed to do but I just wanted to show you it is interesting to visit!
The exhibition opens with an old map, indicating how Antwerp used to look.
The river didn't had the straight line it has now!
The yellow line indicates the new bleu stone border of the Schelde river
In the South you can notice the contours of 2 fortresses.
The one at Lillo was finally handled over to Belgium 1839!!! The Dutch were occupying it and thus had power over the river which flows over Dutch territory before entering the North Sea.
Belgium had to trade a piece of Limburg and Luxemburg against this fort at Lillo.

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This is a very detailed painting of Antwerp how it used to be.
You notice that the centre is very small and all around Antwerp were fields and fields...
You can see how the river bends.
At the bottom right side there was industry.
But they mixed too dangerous things together and one day the whole bunch exploded.
In fact the origin of that explosion was found in the factory where kids had to dismantle unused bullets and bombs etc so they could get recuperate the powder.
Over hundred of children's were killed in an instance, hundreds more injured severely.
The little town was completely blown away from earth and in the city all the windows facing that direction where shattered in little pieces.
Thus came the idea of putting dangerous chemicals etc much further away from the city and safety at factories came to discussion.
Notice that there are NO BRIDGES!!! and ONLY THE RIGHT SITE is populated!
That has several reasons!
First of all the river was always a natural border, the right site used to be Brabant and the left site Flanders.
The left site got flooded very often by the water of the river so it was not suitable to build housed on it.
Only later in time they would succeed to do so.
The river is flowing down on this picture, so leftside is at the right of the drawing and the right side is at the left.
Another reason why the right side developped and had kays where the ships could anker and got loaded and unloaded was because due to the flow of the river and the bends, the right side was hit by the water and deep, while the sand (slib?) was pushed and remained at the left side. That is how developed the Sint Annekes Strand (Saint Anna beach), in former times a local sandy beach. It is still nice to walk there but you can't swim in the water of the Schelde because it is still too poluted.
To highen the capacity of ships small inland wards docks were build (the differen "vliet").
Later real docks with gates where build.
The really first remains were made in the 16th century but it lasted until Napoleon occupied Antwerp that they were made bigger and made real docks.
So the first one is after Napoleon: The Bonapart Dock.

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This is a very small detail of a huge paintdrawing, based on aeral pictures taken in 1902.
The map was started at 1902 and finnished at 1903.
It will be the master piece at the new future museum
MAS (Museum Aan de Stroom).
It is drawn the very same way in every detail on how those pictures were made, even the boats are in the same position.
At the moment they started in 1902, there were houses planned to be build and the designers asked for the building plans so they could already add those houses, to make the map really compleet by the time it would be finished in 1903
However 4 houses never got build :-)
so...
Great thing is that there is a software made and you can zoom in on a pc and see the things really close, then you can click on a location of a house and you will get all the information when available of all the previous people that have been living there!!!
Marvelous idea :-)

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Inside the museum you can view scale size models of ships that has been sailing in Antwerp.

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Antwerp had many little inways for the ships, it is called "vliet" and many names of the streets that used to be a Vliet are called accordingly.
This one was the Sint Pieters Vliet.
It looks idylic but don't be mistaken!
When the tide of the river was low, the water level dropped 6 meters!
The vliet got dried up ... and if you know all the dirt (sanitary) was littered into the water by canals ending on the "vliet" even with low tide, you can imagine how it smelt like '-)

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Working tools

This one was to measure the weight of the sacks.
Antwerp harbour is famous for it's particle trade, while other harbours are better known for container trade.
However the first one is minimized now as well and there is more and more container trade/transport/stock necessary.
Antwerp is 2nd biggest seaport in Europe and the 7th on world scale.

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This thing was used to put the sacks on it, let it slip downstairs where the dock worker had to pick it up and cary it away on his back.
Antwerp dock worker are world famous for their motivation and accurate and fast working.
But dark clouds are gathering above their heads again!
Some Spanish member of the EU wants to make it possible that no longer the dock workers will be unload the ship, but that the crowd of the ships can do this!!!!
This might be the beginning of underpaid (already?) shipmembers who has to unload the ship as well, that are not so well trained and more and more accidents will follow.
The quality the Antwerp harbour was famous for is thus threatened by this decision.
Maybe it is done because we are, next to Rotterdam the biggest and it is a thorn in the eye of the other EU members that has lesser harbours then ours.
It is "opening the market" BUT AT WHAT PRICE!!!!
Jobs will be lost here and other underpaid people will have to replace them... the new start of the right liberalisation of the market. A next step to kill the social welfare of the working man only for the cause of a few who wants to gain money on our safety, our bread, our health and our quality in life!!!
THEREFORE I TOTALLY GRANT ALL MY SYMPATHY TO THE HARBOUR WORKERS ON STRIKE IN BELGIUM AND I SHOULD CALL OUT TO ALL THE OTHER NATIONS TO FOLLOW!
THIS is about YOUR FUTURE and OURS!
Don't give slavery a chance!!!!

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This part of the fence is an original one that bordered between the kay and the storage places.
Some parts are still on the kays but NEEDS A RESTAURATION VERY FAST!!!
Antwerp??? Do something!