Exterior view

In 1560 the magistrate of Antwerp decided to build a city hall on the broad western side of Grote Markt, the main market square, which was owned by the city. This time there was a clear preference for a building in the new Renaissance style. The city managers set up a committee of ten experts, who came to agreement on a design. The Antwerp members included the sculptor, architect and designer Cornelis II Floris, and the artists Jan Metsys and Lambert van Noort. Florentine master builder Nicolo Scarini was one of the committee's foreign members. The inauguration took place on 27 February 1565, four years after the first stone was laid.

The City Hall (Stadhuis) is in the Flemish-Italian Renaissance style, also known as the Floris style, a conspicuous innovation in the Netherlands of the sixteenth century that was imitated as far away as Scandinavia.

It became an exemplar for the new Renaissance style in architecture in the Netherlands and Northern Europe. The Stadhuis of Vlissingen and of The Hague in the Netherlands and the design of the Rathaus of Emden and the portico of the Cologne Rathaus (1557) in Germany and the Green Gate (designed by Regnier or Reiner of Amsterdam) in Gdañsk, Poland were inspired by this new style.

View the drawing of the façade of the City Hall, Antwerp.