Antwerp Town Hall is the most important Renaissance building in the Low Countries. The monument, dating from 1564 and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999, garnered international acclaim shortly after its completion and has been described and depicted countless times. In addition to its architecture, its imposing dimensions are said to have made a significant impression at the time. Thanks in part to the restoration and renovation project, which was entrusted to the team led by Hub and Origin following an Open Call by the Flemish Government Architect, the town hall continues to impress today.

A building over 450 years old has a history of alterations, repairs and renovations, and this certainly applies to a representative building such as Antwerp Town Hall. Its architectural history is a substantial study ¹ that reads like a novel, in which the various regimes and rulers, changing customs, preserved accounts and drawings, and the building itself form the incomplete pieces of the puzzle. The function of town hall has been retained over the centuries, although this is relative, as functions such as archive, court, arsenal, chapel and prison have since disappeared. 1 Unpublished architectural history study from 2012 by De Clercq, Maclot and Van Ginneken.