Rossaert was originally a shop selling seamen’s gear: sailors purchased their caps there and Luc Tuymans bought himself a naval officer’s uniform. The little medieval house in Nosestraat rubs up against St Paul’s Church, with its veritable gallery of paintings by Rubens, Van Dyck and Jordaans. At the same time, Rossaert’s shop window looks out over the (once) colourful Veemarkt square, where women of easy virtue used to canoodle with sea dogs in the Shipper’s Quarter. Rossaert’s passers-by included pleasure-seekers, dandies, fortune-hunters, writers and artists. Big names, too, from the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix, with his fascination for Rubens, and the authors Théophile Gautier and Gérard de Nerval, who came in search of real-life Rubenesque blondes, to the moody Baudelaire, William Turner, who sketched the Rossaert house in his travel journal, Victor Hugo, who was fascinated by the old Antwerp, and Félicien Rops, who sought, found and drew his muses here. Not to mention the countless dignitaries who came to admire the private art collections, the churches and the museum.

De Rossaert en zijn passanten (‘Rossaert and its Passers-by’) is published by Ludion and the Ronny and Jessy Van de Velde Gallery to mark Rossaert’s reopening on 24 April, after a long period of closure following exhibitions on the likes of Ubu Roi, Alechinsky, Dotremont, Desmond Morris and Jan Fabre. The richly illustrated book describes the history of the neighbourhood, the passers-by and their impressions in over 400 pages. The historian Eliane van den Ende conjures up inspiring and surprising stories from under the counter of this famous little shop.