Sint-Michielskerk

Sint-Michielskerk stands in Antwerp’s southern district as a parish church built between 1893 and 1897. Frans Van Dijk designed its three-aisled cross basilica in mainly neoromanesque and Byzantine forms. Facing Amerikalei, the Romanesque west façade carries Jan Gerrits’s 1897 tympanum, Majestas Domini. Christ holds the Book of Life there, surrounded by an eagle, ox, lion, and angel.

The building answered Antwerp’s southern expansion and followed an earlier local tradition reaching back to the seventh century. Saint Amandus founded the first church here, while Sint-Michiels Abbey arose beside the Scheldt in 1124. Inside, the tall nave, transept, and crossing rise above green Vosges granite and reddish-brown Swedish granite. Gold mosaics cover the choir and two side chapels, with Christ enthroned among the twelve apostles.

A seventy-metre tower, mostly built from red brick, rises behind the building with a round colonnade and slate pine-cone roof. The white marble pulpit rests on two standing blue marble lions, beside fourteen brass Stations of the Cross. Above the apse, the inscription Ego sum Lux mundi accompanies the enthroned Christ and twelve apostles.