The 23 Best Places to Drink and Stay in Antwerp

A luxury hotel built inside a monastery complex that sits within Antwerp's botanical gardens, so the grounds do most of the talking before you've even checked in. Rooms and suites vary enough that no two feel alike, the spa leans heavily toward the sublime, and the four on-site restaurants include outposts of Hertog Jan and Fine Fleur. The Michelin Guide awarded it two Keys.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Keys
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A former Augustinian convent in Antwerp's Green Quarter, transformed by architect Vincent Van Duysen into a 44-room hotel where the cloister hush never quite left. No two rooms match, though all blend old stonework with contemporary furniture in a way that feels considered rather than styled. Three walled gardens, a spa, a library, and a pool occupy the convent's generous common spaces, and the bar is set inside the chapel.

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A 21-room townhouse hotel a short walk from the Cathedral of Our Lady, Hotel Julien threads the needle between boutique minimalism and actual warmth, with blonde wood, creamy neutrals, and beds that mean business. The spa sits in 16th-century cellars, the bar leans Belgian, and the roof terrace looks straight at the cathedral. Breakfast is included, which in Antwerp means you'll leave the building full and slightly smug.

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

Three 17th-century canal houses knocked into one another is how you get Antwerp's most intimate luxury boutique hotel. De Witte Lelie earns its name: white rugs, white armchairs, white-on-white rooms that feel more like a very well-appointed friend's townhouse than a hotel. No doormen, no bellhops, no hustle. Fellow guests lean toward the fashion and design crowd, so you may want to think twice before shuffling down to breakfast in yesterday's outfit. One Michelin Key.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

Seven suites named after precious stones, in a cluster of old merchant townhouses that have been quietly upstaged by their own decor. This adults-only boutique hotel in medieval Antwerp earns a Michelin Key, and the details make the case: clawfoot tubs, marble fireplaces, a hand-painted landscape mural, and a courtyard garden that no one's child will ever ruin. The vintage library is small and genuine, the topiary is lush, and breakfast is blissfully quiet.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The atrium alone explains the room rate: a cathedral-scaled space of marble pillars and velvet sofas occupying what was once a working bank, with the old vaults converted into a wine cellar below. Hotel FRANQ is a luxury hotel in a city that doesn't have many, and the rooms upstairs keep the drama quiet, with pale wood floors, French windows, and Marshall speakers. Bicycles are available for guests exploring Antwerp's old port neighborhoods on foot or wheel.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The black-lacquered headboards and gleaming subway tiles signal the theme early: this is a boutique hotel that leans hard into a noir aesthetic, right in Antwerp's fashion district. Rooms are compact and open-plan, with unexpected Asian details that nod quietly to the city's trading-port past. A rooftop terrace and a brasserie-style restaurant feel like bonuses in a hotel this size. Outside, cobblestones and diamond merchants have been here far longer than the avant-garde storefronts.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A historic Antwerp townhouse that spent centuries as a private residence, confusingly named the Great Ruby, then reinvented itself as a bank before someone had the good sense to turn it into a luxury hotel. Marriott's Autograph Collection picked it up, and the rooms lean into the conceit, decorated in deep gemstone tones with a Rococo bones that the renovation didn't flatten. Old-world drama, decidedly modern comfort.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Cocktail glasses chilled to -25°C before anything goes in them tells you where this Antwerp bar's head is at. BelRoy's Bijou distills its own spirits and bottles its own cocktails, so the house pour here is the house, full stop. Tapas come out to keep things going, but drinking is the point. It's a stylish room that takes the glass seriously without taking itself too seriously, which in a cocktail bar is harder than it sounds.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Dogma calls its menu "dandy drinks," which turns out to be accurate rather than just cute. It's a cocktail bar on a quiet Antwerp side street that treats the classics as starting points, nudging a Negroni sideways with Amer Picon and building from there. Fresh oysters and a cheese-and-charcuterie board give you a reason to stay past the second round. The 50 gave it a Discovery nod, and the crowd seems quietly pleased with itself for having found it.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery