Inside the Sint Annatunnel, Antwerp

Following on from our sounds last year from Hamburg’s Old Elbtunnel, we pay a trip to another iconic underground pedestrian passage, the Sint Annatunnel in Antwerp.

The St-Annatunnel is a tunnel under the river Schelde for pedestrians and cyclists that connects the two parts of the city of Antwerp.

Its construction was finished in 1933 and it is still functional – wooden escalators take you 30m deep into the 572m long tunnel. This field recording from the tunnel, and its partner recording, come from our Antwerp sonic correspondent, Dieter van Staey.

Unusually, he started with a created soundscape piece, which he found worked with the field recording he’d later captured, and combined the two:

“For this one I started with the soundscape as a matter of fact, a couple of layered softsynths, stretched out with paulstretch, and with a lot of reverb.”

“I liked the soundscape but it lacked something organic, so it became an abandonded file.”

“A couple of weeks ago I made some recordings in that tunnel, and while doing so, I remembered the abandoned soundscape and thought the sounds would match well.”

“The reverby sounds of the tunnel did indeed sound good with the soundscape and so it became a Cities and Memory project.”

City version:

Memory version: