Antwerp is, to the modern eye, a strange choice for an urban biography. But it’s a place that can make a fair claim to having invented a lot of the modern world, notably the financialisation of trade and especially of art: the first place where one bought paintings from dealers rather than commissioning them from the studios. A place that tried valiantly to separate trade from religion, to protect its minorities and resist anti-Protestant edicts while still being rules from Spain, and to ride-out the waves of regulation and repression that washed around it. It was a bold experiment in trying to re-become a city-state, at a time when that simply wasn’t possible any more.

It’s impossible to read this book and not feel its author’s debt to Barbara Tuchman, both in the general style of writing and in the sharp eye for personal detail. There are a couple of quite detailed biographies, of an architect and a printer/publisher, each of which is both engaging gossipy and carefully chosen to show the changes that each man was essential in bringing in. In that way it’s a very personal book that seeks to illustrate the history of the city by the histories of individuals, gleaned from a formidable amount of primary research: Pye seems to have read every letter, book, and bill relating to the period.

I don’t think it quite succeeds, despite the great writing and scholarship: the city’s history seems confused and lost amid the detail, it’s hard to follow the timeline and understand the sweep of the politics and the events shaping it. But it’s still a superb read, packed full of anecdotes and the seeds or modernity.

3/5. Finished Saturday 1 August, 2026.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)