Het Roze Huis is the queer community house of Antwerp, under the railway bridge on Draakplaats in Zurenborg, and Café Den Draak is its bar on the ground floor. The house was bought in 1999 and opened in 2000; the organisation behind it has been going for thirty years.
The café is the part a visitor uses. It is local and unpretentious, with themed evenings and the occasional DJ, and it is the only place in the city where you can walk into queer Antwerp without paying a door charge or knowing anybody. Above it sit some thirty member associations, from sports clubs to a group for queer adults with autism, plus counselling, a buddy project and rooms that other groups can hire.
Zurenborg is a twenty-minute walk east of the centre and is worth the walk for the art nouveau streets alone.
The people in this picture are AI-generated.
