Before I went to Antwerp I asked for some advice to friends who had recently visited it.
Emanuela and Sibilla excited, in chorus, just said a word: Kanaal.
They only visited the art gallery, the rest was closed.

I asked for help at Visit Antwerp to know how to get to this place, which I didn’t know was so mysterious.
If you say Kanaal, even in the city, not everyone knows what it is.

Google doesn’t help me in my research and then once in Belgium, I decide to go and find out personally this impenetrable place 20 minutes from downtown.
The magical word to pronounce is Alex Vervoordt.

Antwerp with the sun is gorgeous.
As soon as we arrive we start wandering through the buildings, actually “conceived as a small town in the middle of the countryside” as you can read on the site.

We find a yard, a table ready to be set up for lunch, an abandoned church, a bakery. We decide to come in and ask for information. They will also open a restaurant. Just a few steps away from a supermarket with high quality products.

Kanaal is an ex industrial area, first home to a gin factory. Alex Vervoordt has decided to renovate it and make it a multifunctional complex, but instead of the condominium gym there is an art gallery. We try to find out where this gallery is. I see two towers and I sneak in. Just artist names on closed doors and no other explanation.

I go out to call Nadia, my friend of adventure. When we come back the doors are magically open. Each room is dedicated to an artist’s artwork. Marina Ambramovic, Takis. Hidden in a corner an Otto Boll’s work.

But I’m not satisfied. I know somewhere there’s something else: there are apartments, there is a showroom, there is definitely another part of this bizarre art gallery.

Finally we find someone willing to help us. He opens the door to what, just a few minutes before, it just looked like a gray structure surrounded by water. “At the edge of the world” by Anish Kapoor is hidden inside. A few steps away in a dark building still under renovation is an exhibition entirely dedicated to Michel Mouffe.

Alex Vervoordt is the classic person who doen’t like labels. In the 1960s he started buying unique pieces and then sell them. At 21, he buys a Magritte for $ 2,400 and resells it to $ 47,600. Over the years his horizon moves towards interior design but always with a common denominator: one-of-a-kind.

The showroom is the most intimate part of Kanaal, the one where his soul from interior designer takes shape. Now, just 12 people around the world select the exposed pieces. Artworks, definitely not accessible to the most. More than just a showroom this is also an art gallery for modernism and design lovers.