It was very cloudy and drizzly when we visited the Cathedral of Our Lady of Antwerp during our first full day in Belgium. Not wanting to get wet, we opted to tour the cathedral for as long as necessary while it rained outside. If I remember right, we stayed a good two hours here. We did walk around the premises twice looking at all the religious art and paintings in detail. Just like in many cathedrals in Europe nowadays, tourists paid an entry fee. It wasn't much and it was very affordable.

Very old and historic, the cathedral boasts of many paintings by Baroque painter, Peter Paul Rubens, as well as by Otto Van Been, Jacob de Backer and Martin de Vos. I also remember walking on many tombstones of many bishops, politicians, artists, and other prominent personalities on the cathedral floor. I did a little research about them and found out that nobody is actually buried here. A number of the tombstones were recovered from an Antwerp church that was demolished. The remains of people who were buried in the Cathedral have since been transferred to a cemetery.

It is said that the Cathedral of our Lady in Antwerp is the largest Gothic church in the Low Countries and took almost 170 years to complete with construction between 1352 and 1518.