Antwerp: The Glory Years

In the 16th century, Antwerp was a bustling North Sea port known for its rebellious spirit, where anything could happen or be believed. It was a place where rules were broken, religious, sexual, and intellectual. One man cornered all the money in the city and reinvented ideas of what money meant, while another gave Antwerp a new shape purely out of his own ambition. Jews fleeing the Portuguese Inquisition needed Antwerp for their escape, thanks to the remarkable woman at the head of the grandest banking family in Europe. Thomas More opened Utopia there, Erasmus puzzled over money and exchanges, William Tyndale sheltered there and smuggled out his Bible in English until he was killed. Pieter Bruegel painted the town as "The Tower of Babel." However, when Antwerp rebelled with the Dutch against the Spanish and lost, all that glory was buried and its true history rewritten. Michael Pye sets out to rediscover the city that was lost and bring its wilder days to life using novels, paintings, songs, schoolbooks, letters, and the archives of Venice, London, and the Medici. He builds a picture of a city haunted by fire, plague, and violence, but learning how to be a power in its own right in the world after feudalism.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 04 August 2022
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Even before Amsterdam, there existed a dazzling North Sea port at the center of the known world: the city of Antwerp. Antwerp was as sensational as nineteenth-century Paris or twentieth-century New York, a place where anything could happen or at least be believed: killer bankers, easy kisses, a market in secrets, and every kind of heresy. For half the sixteenth century, it was the place for breaking rules - religious, sexual, intellectual.

In Antwerp, things changed. One man cornered all the money in the city and reinvented ideas of what money meant. Another gave Antwerp a new shape purely out of his own ambition. Jews fleeing the Portuguese Inquisition needed Antwerp for their escape, thanks to the remarkable woman at the head of the grandest banking family in Europe.

Thomas More opened "Utopia" there, Erasmus puzzled over money and exchanges, William Tyndale sheltered there and smuggled out his Bible in English until he was killed. Pieter Bruegel painted the town as "The Tower of Babel."

But when Antwerp rebelled with the Dutch against the Spanish and lost, all that glory was buried, and its true history was rewritten. The city that unsettled so many now became conformist. Mutinous troops burned the city records. Michael Pye sets out to rediscover the city that was lost and bring its wilder days to life using every kind of clue: novels, paintings, songs, schoolbooks, letters, and the archives of Venice, London, and the Medici. He builds a picture of a city haunted by fire, plague, and violence, but learning how to be a power in its own right in the world after feudalism.

This is the Antwerp that was the proud exception to all of Europe.

Weight: 238g
Dimension: 128 x 197 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780141982465