Even before Amsterdam there was a dazzling North Sea port at the hub of the known world: the city of Antwerp.

Antwerp was sensational like nineteenth-century Paris or twentieth-century New York, somewhere anything could happen or at least be believed: killer bankers, easy kisses, a market in secrets and every kind of heresy. For half the sixteenth century, it was the place for breaking rules - religious, sexual, intellectual.

In Antwerp, things changed. One man cornered all the money in the c...