Belgium · Flanders · Antwerp
Zurenborg, Antwerp — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Zurenborg is an Art Nouveau quarter in south-east Antwerp, laid out between 1894 and 1906 around the mansion street Cogels-Osylei.
About Zurenborg
Where to stay in Zurenborg
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Two poles split the neighbourhood. Cogels-Osylei and the streets around it are almost entirely residential, so rooms there are guesthouses and apartments rather than hotels, and the reward is a doorstep view of the fin-de-siècle facades. Dageraadplaats sits at the Borgerhout end, ringed by cafés and terraces.
Antwerpen-Berchem station anchors the southern edge, which puts fast trains toward Brussels within a short walk. If you want quiet nights with the centre one tram ride away, this corner of Antwerp answers.
About Zurenborg
What are the main landmarks in Zurenborg?
The monuments here are houses. Cogels-Osylei runs the densest stretch, where turrets, coloured brick and wrought iron were set out to outdo the neighbouring plot, and four corner houses named for the seasons hold the crossing with Waterloostraat. Transvaalstraat and Generaal Van Merlenstraat carry the same architecture eastward.
The Rubenshuis and Museum Plantin-Moretus stand well west in the old core, while the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp sits over in the Zuid, so Zurenborg's own draw stays domestic.
What is the history of Zurenborg?
The land came first, then the speculation. Zurenborg was open ground on the edge of Antwerp until building companies bought up the fields and cut a grid of streets across them in the 1890s, and by 1906 the plots carried townhouses in Art Nouveau alongside neo-Gothic, neo-Renaissance and other revival fronts. Buyers were merchants and professionals moving out of the crowded core.
Clearance schemes circled the quarter in the twentieth century. Protest kept Cogels-Osylei standing, and the streets came through with their facades intact.
Where is Zurenborg?
Zurenborg lies south-east of central Antwerp, straddling Berchem and Borgerhout, and runs from Draakplaats at one end to Antwerpen-Berchem station at the other.
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Updated September 2026