The Rubenshuis in Antwerp was Peter Paul Rubens's home and workshop, and he designed it himself. He began construction about a year after his 1609 marriage to Isabella Brant, on what was then Vaartstraat, now the Wapper, beside the Herentalse Vaart canal. The article calls it an Italian-style villa that drew on Italian Renaissance palace architecture. It gives no completion date, so the year shown is when work began.
The complex had a house, a studio, a monumental portico, an interior courtyard and a Baroque garden. After Rubens died, his widow Helena Fourment leased it to William Cavendish and his wife Margaret, and it was sold after she left in 1660.
The city bought the house in 1937 under a legacy from Henri Blomme, who built a full-size reconstruction for the 1910 Brussels World's Fair. It opened to the public in 1946, after restoration.
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