Antwerpen-Centraal, Grand Staircase and Underground Platforms
The station building, completed in 1905, resembles a great stone cathedral. A renovation finished in 2007 added two levels of underground platforms, turning the station into a four-level structure. Looking down from the grand staircase beneath the dome, platforms stack one below another as if the floor had dropped away, and the lowest tracks run about 18 m underground. The heavily ornamented 19th-century canopy and the bare concrete atrium share the same view, two eras joined without quite fitting together. Between trains, when the marble hall empties, only the echo of the high ceiling remains. It is a vertical transfer space, neither arrival nor departure, where people sink up and down through the levels.
See photos and posts for this place on the LIMap map
Nearby liminal spaces
- Rotterdam Centraal Wooden-Lattice Platforms (79 km)
- Liège-Guillemins Station (104 km)
LIMap is a map for finding and sharing liminal spaces: places emptied of people that feel eerie and nostalgic at the same time. Many of these places are private or off-limits, so please follow the notes above and view them only from where you are allowed.