Antwerpen is a big city in the north of Belgium. Todays the city has about 530.000 inhabitants. Around 1880 there were onlys 170.000 inhabitants (although the area of the city was smaller than today).

In Antwerpen the first horse tram was opened on 1873-05-25, a line from the Meir to the village of Berchem. Later on some more horse trams were opend. To read more about the horse trams, visit my page about the horse tram in Antwerpen.

In 1900 all lines were taken over by the CGTA (Compagnie Générale des tramways d Anvers) with the purpose to electrify the horse tram lines. In 1902 all lines were elektrified. Antwerpen is one of the cities in Belgium were todays there is a large network of tram lines.

In Antwerpen there were also lines of the NMVB. At first the lines of the NMVB ended at the outside of the city center. Long negotiations with the city ended at last (about the year 1930) in running the lines of the NMVB into the city center over the tracks of the city tram of Antwerpen. For details of the NMVB lines, see the detail pages of the NMVB in the province of Antwerpen.

The evolution of the tram network in the city of Antwerpen is too large to be described on this page. To read much more, you can visit the page of the Antwerpse tram on Wikipedia.