The Rampart, The Traffic Artery, and the Park; Designing for the city regions of Antwerp

1.2
Historical-Morphological
Analysis of Antwerp
On the development of the city along the river the Scheldt
The first mentioning of a settlement near the Scheldt is speculated to be
around 250 A.D. in the name of two Roman settlements; Scaldis (Scheldt in
Latin) and Scinda (The Schijn). The subsequent Dark Ages marked a period of
shifting country borders for Antwerp under the rule of the Frankish Empire, in
which the Scheldt became a national border on multiple occasions, as a result
of the subsequent treaties of Verdun, Meerssen, and Ribbemont. Antwerp became
a stronghold with a moat at the hands of the Normans, who conquered
the settlement in 836. Under the rule of the Holy Roman Empire, the Margraviate
of Antwerp (Graafschap van Antwerpen) was established in 974. The city
subsequently received town privileges (stadsrechten), in 1221 by Duke Henry II
of Brabant. The city kept holding a strategic position at the border of the Holy
Roman Empire, reachable by land and by sea which played an important role
in its development. Until the signing of the Treaty of Senlis in 1493, the Scheldt
served as a border between the landgraviate of Brabant (to which Antwerp
belonged) and the landgraviate of Flanders, which belonged to France. With
this country border alleviated, and the Scheldt now reachable via the Western
Scheldt (de Westerschelde), the city flourished as an international trading hub
and port city, allowing the city to grow. Antwerp was subsequently appointed
the most important trading city of the Northern Netherlands, by Emperor
Charles V (Karel V). These events roughly mark the city’s entrance to its golden
age, which leads us to the drawing of figure 1.5 (Broeders, et al., 2017, pp.
52-119).
The following pages will describe the morphological development of
Antwerp over the course of its history. Specifically, this chapter’s overall goal is
to see how the relationship between the inner-city and its suburbs developed,
and the relationship between the left and right side of the river.
37