Vleeshuis

The Butchers Guild decided to build a new Vleeshuis near the cattle market, where the animals were slaughtered and cut.

Though the great hall of its interior bears a resemblance to a church, the stairwell towers and crow-stepped gables make it clear this was intended as a secular institution.

[4] The interior is divided into two halves, each with a span of 7.5 metres (24 ft 7 in)—the maximum length of a structural oak beam.

"[4] Additional finishes were Gobertange limestone for carvings, bluestone for doorways and staircase, and slate for the roof.

[3] Peyrot did not need all the space so he divided the interior into a storage area, and a theatre auditorium, often used by the Liefde en Eendragt .

Painters used the studios on the upper floors, including Nicaise de Keyser and Gustave Wappers.

[6] As it was undergoing restoration by the architect Alexis Van Mechelen, the Provincial Commission for Monument Conservation decided to re-purpose the building as a Museum of Antiquities.

One of the oldest collections in Antwerp, the museum sought to display a broad variety of arts works ranging from antiquity to the present.

The lower level houses a reconstruction of a bell foundry and the Van Engelen workshop, a studio for the making of brass instruments.