Europe's Babylon: The Rise and Fall of Antwerp's Golden Age

Before Amsterdam, there was a dazzling North Sea port at the hub of the known world: the city of Antwerp.



In the Age of Exploration, Antwerp was sensational like nineteenth-century Paris or twentieth-century New York. It was somewhere anything could happen or at least be believed: killer bankers, easy kisses, a market in secrets and every kind of heresy. For half the sixteenth century, it was the place for breaking rules-religious, sexual, intellectual.



And it was a place of change. Thomas Mo...