Then, about 1565, was built the =City Hall of Antwerp=, which represents the most imposing example of the Renaissance in Belgium. It corresponds to the importance which the city had now attained as the chief commercial emporium of the Netherlands. For the supremacy of Bruges was past: her harbours had been allowed to fill up with silt and in 1505 the Fuggers, merchant princes of Augsburg, removed their affairs to Antwerp, whither the “factories” of the Hanseatic League soon followed. By the middle of the century a thousand foreign commercial firms were represented there; her great fairs attracted merchants from all parts of the world; the Scheldt was filled with shipping and over a hundred vessels are said to have passed in and out of her harbour daily. She surpassed in wealth and prosperity even Venice and Genoa. The design is by the sculptor and architect, Cornelius de Vriendt, also known as Cornelius Floris. The principal façade, over three hundred feet long, consists of four stories; the first being of rusticated masonry, forming an open arcade; the second and third embellished with pilasters and entablatures, framing a regular repetition of mullioned windows, while the fourth comprises, as occasionally in Spain, an arcaded loggia, the shadowed effects of which correspond to those of an Italian cornice. The roof has a slight _curb_ inward and is studded with two tiers of small dormers. The monotony of the façade is somewhat relieved by the projection in the centre. But, though this involves a change in the shape of the windows, there is a new kind of repetition, while above the third story the place of a dormer-gable is taken by an erection that has no structural significance and is merely a piling up of ornamental details to produce a colossal embellishment. It is instructive to compare this pavilion with the Pavillon de l’Horloge of the Louvre, which represents a logical as well as flexible and original application of the Palladian style. Compared with it De Vriendt’s design exhibits a formality which suggests that it had been copied from some work in the Orders of Architecture, while the top part proclaims him a sculptor of florid taste, rather than an architect. The best examples, however, of Flemish Renaissance are to be found in the gild houses and domestic buildings. Magnificent examples of the former are the =Houses= of the =Brewers=, =Tanners=, =Archers=, and =Cordeliers= or rope-makers, in =Antwerp=, and in =Brussels= those of the =Archers=, =Butchers=, =Carpenters=, and =Skippers=; the gable-end of the last-named representing the stern of a vessel with four protruding cannons.