The 10 Best Bars and Cafés in Antwerp, Belgium

Famous throughout Antwerp, this jazz cafe has been hot and happening ever since 1964. De Muze represents everything the city stands for: artists and forgotten writers, wannabe musicians and those who already made it. At least three times a week there is a music gig where up and coming bands test their jazzy rhythms on the public.

The Mechelseplein is one of Antwerp’s most vibrant squares and cafe Korsakov is located right on it’s corner. The ground floor feels like you’re own living room where you can settle in for a cup of coffee on a sunny afternoon. If you’re planning on going wild a weekend night you can move upstairs, where it feels more like old-fashioned Berlin in the ’50s.

Doing your laundry in Antwerp has ceased to be boring and annoying ever since Wasbar opened its doors two years ago. The bar is extremely popular with students and young professionals for its ingenious concept: drop your laundry in the available washing machines and enjoy a salad or a smoothie while you wait the beautiful new-retro décor with fellow laundry-doers.

Close to Antwerp Grand Place and literally in the shadow of the great Cathedral, you can find Witzli Poetzli, a minuscule cafe known for being a hang-out for artists and writers. It’s a charming bar and an archetype of a true Antwerp cafe.

A somewhat bohemian cafe which evokes flashbacks to Paris in the 1900s, Chatleroi is the hippest bar on this list. Located on the trendy Zuid, opposite the majestic Museum of Fine Arts, you can’t imagine a more perfect terrace to spend hours and hours. The vintage furniture, charming music and great beers are the icing on the cake.

Café Beveren is the ultimate place to experience the real Antwerp atmosphere. Although the outside looks unremarkable, the interior is filled with colour, music, and locals, creating a very folksy atmosphere . The eye catcher of this cafe, for which it is known in the entire city, is the 75-year-old organ that starts playing for just one euro.