The Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp offers a splendid overview of artistic life in the Southern Netherlands, and later Belgium. The museum’s collections showcase works by Flemish Primitives such as Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling, Quinten Matsijs - the founder of the Antwerp Art School -, Peter Paul Rubens, Sir Anthony Van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens as well as work by nineteenth-century salon artists and modernists James Ensor and Rik Wouters.

In May 2011 the museum closed its doors for renovation works. Its extensive collection will spread out to venues across the city, the country and the world