Walking Antwerp's Linkeroever from the tunnel to the beach

The escalators down into the Sint-Annatunnel still run on wooden slats fitted in 1933, dropping into a cream-tiled Art Deco shaft beside the Scheldt. The tube at the bottom runs 572 m, straight and white-tiled, people and pushed bicycles shrinking into the perspective. The crossing is free and unticketed, day and night.

Through the tunnel to Frederik van Eedenplein

This is how locals arrive on Linkeroever. The escalators take one person at a time, so the descent begins slowly before the long floor opens out ahead of you. A bicycle comes down with you and gets pushed through. Maintenance on the escalators falls on Thursdays, and the tunnel itself stays open on those days.

At the far end you come up on Frederik van Eedenplein with the Antwerp skyline straight in front of you. Turn south along the dike and the beach keeps until later in the day.

The buoy field five minutes south

Maritiem Openluchtmuseum Boeienweide sits five minutes south of the tunnel mouth, in a meadow beside the Scheldt dike. Stock anchors rust in long grass. Red and green navigation buoys stand on stone blocks among ship's propellers, bells and beacons, and nothing is fenced off, so you walk between them.

The field is free and permanently open, so it fits any hour of the day. After the skyline itself, it is the ground on the dike that photographs best.

Sint-Annastrand and the free 50 m pool

Sint-Annastrand is Antwerp's only real beach and the reason most visitors cross. A wide strip of pale sand runs along the left bank with a low dike behind it. Laden container ships slide past close in, and across the brown tidal water the cathedral spire and Antwerp's towers line up in a single view. The beach took a fresh top layer of sand and reopened on 26 April 2026.

Swimming in the Scheldt is not allowed, so the swimming happens in the pool next door. The sand itself has no door policy; it is the terraces behind it that take the bookings.

Openluchtzwembad De Molen is a heated 50 m open-air pool on the same strip, with a grass sunbathing lawn, the windmill standing over one side and harbour cranes on the skyline. Entry is free and takes no reservation, so you arrive with a towel and walk in. When it fills, staff run swimming in 15-minute blocks. The 2026 season ran 16 May to 16 September, which makes it a summer entry and nothing else.

The windmill on the pavilion roof

Molen van Sint-Anneke stands on the flat roof of a low brick beach pavilion, a black-and-white timber post mill with its sails turning above the dune grass. It was moved here in 1937 to save it from the Albert Canal, rebuilt in 2001, and has been grinding again since 2008.

Visitors get in on the last Sunday of each month, 13:00 to 17:00. The interior is a working mill, so only small groups go up at a time. The café underneath the pavilion is shut, which puts lunch back along Wandeldijk.

Concrete and coloured glass at Sint-Anna-ten-Drieën

Sint-Anna-ten-Drieënkerk reads from the street as a fortress of slate and glazed brick with an almost blind exterior. Jozef Ritzen built it between 1968 and 1970, and it has been a protected monument since 2020. Inside, the only light arrives through Jacques Loire's thick glass-in-concrete panels in cobalt, ruby and amber.

The church opens for services and for the ANNA3 concert and lecture series. Booking an ANNA3 date buys you time in the building with that light down on the floor, which is the reason to come.

Riverside Tower from the dike

Riverside Tower stands alone against open Scheldt sky, a curved white concrete slab of twenty storeys on pilotis with ribbon balconies and a glazed penthouse on top. Léon Stynen and Paul De Meyer finished it in 1972 in a refined brutalist manner, and it was Belgium's first residential high-rise with a green roof.

The flats are private and nothing inside is open, so you look at it from the dike, for nothing, and walk on to the lake.

Galgenweel and the sailing clubs

Galgenweel is Flanders' largest semi-natural brackish lake, a broad sheet of water ringed by reeds with 1960s apartment towers behind the far bank. A soft cinder path makes a free 3.5 km circuit of it, flat enough to run. Small white dinghy sails tack across the middle.

Five sailing clubs sit on the shore and run taster sessions and courses, plus one free open watersports day each May. Watersports are running again after the 2023 bacteria closure, though open swimming stays banned because the bottom is irregular and holds deep holes.

Sint-Annabos and the hide at Blokkersdijk

Sint-Annabos is the big green counterweight to the city across the water, free to enter, with dead-straight ranks of tall poplars on sandy dredge-spoil ground and a dike path along one edge. The marked loops run 5 km. The western strip was cleared as a Scheldt-tunnel worksite and is being replanted, and tunnel-works cranes show above the treeline to the west, but the main loop stays walkable.

Blokkersdijk is a European-listed bird site inside the city, a reed-fringed brackish lagoon behind a grass dike with a motorway embankment closing one flank. Only part of it is open to you: the 'Hut van Paul' hide, a timber box with horizontal slot windows, and the viewing wall on the Scheldedijk. The north-east entrance has been shut since 2021 for the Oosterweel works, and full access is not expected back before 2027. The hide holds very few people at a time, so Natuurpunt's guided walks are the dependable way into it.

Concerts at Middenvijver

Middenvijver (off Blancefloerlaan) is Antwerp's big open-air concert ground, a flat plain of grass and gravel with temporary stage towers and scaffold screens, the lake and poplar belt behind it and the city skyline far off. Live is Live ran 27 to 29 June 2026 with Robbie Williams, Nick Cave and Iron Maiden.

Ticketed events here run into the tens of thousands at €€€, and coaches arrive as a matter of course. On any other day it is an empty field, so time the trip around a date and the rest of this walk fits the same weekend.

Eating along the Wandeldijk

De Zeester is set into the Wandeldijk behind a glass front, with a big south-facing terrace over the Scheldt, a children's playground alongside and an open fire inside in winter. Zeeland mussels, eel in green sauce, lobster and oysters come out of the kitchen, at €€. It is the old Sint-Anneke eating house and where families on the dike end up. It closes Mondays, and the dining room and the terrace both want reserving, so book around that closed day.

An's Hoeve holds the upper end of the beach strip, a low farmhouse-style restaurant on the Wandeldijk with a sheltered garden terrace. Platters of langoustines, lobster and mussels go out to tables facing the river dike. Prices run €€€, with group menus from €70 to €95 per head. Parties of four or more are asked to keep to a maximum of four different starters and mains. Reserve, because group bookings fill the room. It stays open through winter on reduced days, which makes it the one dike kitchen you can count on in January.

Plaasj Kaffee (Wandeldijk 1) has a heated, windproof covered terrace pointed straight across the Scheldt at the harbour skyline, so the view holds up in February as well as August. The bar opens at 11:00 and the kitchen runs 12:00 to 21:00 daily, at €€. Access is step-free, and 500 free parking spaces sit behind it.

Café Retro (Beatrijslaan 5) has held its corner since 1933, a plain brasserie among Linkeroever's modernist blocks with a long bar, pavement tables and regulars in by mid-morning. It opens 10:00 until late, daily, at €. This is residential Linkeroever, the local option away from the water. Reports on the kitchen vary, so treat it as lunch between walks.

Sleeping on Linkeroever

City Camping Antwerp (Jachthavenweg 6) is effectively the only place to sleep inside the district. Green pitches and canvas city tipis sit behind a hedge, bikes racked by the sanitary block, the marina masts and the windmill just over the top of it. It takes tents on a meadow, campers, large camping pitches and tipis, at €€. The site was rebranded from Camping De Molen after a full renovation in 2021. Winter-season bookings are open, and the beach, the pool and the waterbus are all walking distance.

Closed days and bookings

Reserve De Zeester and An's Hoeve before you cross. De Zeester closes Mondays, An's Hoeve runs reduced days through winter, and the windmill opens only on the last Sunday of the month, 13:00 to 17:00. The pool is a summer entry, and Blokkersdijk stays partly closed for the Oosterweel works.

See the Antwerp guide and the Antwerp hotel search.