An understated Diamond District

Antwerp was damp and dull -- not unusual, I gather -- when I arrived by train one morning in early October. The lofty glass and stone of Central Station looked as though it needed a good cleaning, and the square in front was bordered by a shopworn jumble of buildings, without the Flemish medieval charm of nearby Bruges and Ghent. But the Belgian port on the River Scheldt has its own inner dazzle. There, as much as 90% of the world’s uncut diamonds are traded, and master cutters know better than anyone how to make the hardest stone on Earth catch the light and sparkle.

I had come with my sister, Martha, who lives in Brussels, a 45-minute train trip from here, for a tour of the Diamond District organized by the Free Spirits, a group of English-speaking women from all over the world, many of them the wives of businessmen based in Belgium. The outing was a casual affair, including a tour of the district, a visit to the Diamond Museum and lunch, arranged with the help of Pelugi, an Antwerp company that specializes in custom-designed diamond jewelry.

About 40 women assembled at the entrance to Central Station to meet Herman Heymans, our fast-moving, dapper guide. He told us diamond traders used to disembark at the railway station, selling their wares out of their pockets to clients in cafes, before the diamond exchanges were established in the early 20th century.

Our umbrellas up, we set out walking along one long side of the train station, lined by jewelry stores run by Russians. Heymans said that such shops might be good enough for small gems set in clusters. “But if you want a big stone,” he told us, “buy from an Antwerp cutter who knows how to make diamonds shine.”

Some of the women in the group had diamonds in their eyes, but I was more interested in the history and workings of the diamond trade, which arrived in Antwerp in the 15th century with Jews expelled from Catholic Spain and Portugal. Their fortunes waxed and waned. By the eve of World War II, a quarter of the 200,000 people living in Antwerp were Jewish, but the Holocaust emptied their neighborhoods and left the diamond industry in decline.

After the war, the Jews of Antwerp nursed the diamond trade back to life. Now the city’s Jewish population is about 20,000, and the industry nets about $26 billion a year.

In front of a synagogue on Terliststraat, we saw men in long black coats and fur hats, boys with ring curls at their ears and yarmulkes -- conservative Hasidic Jews, Heymans told us, from all over the world and about a dozen different branches of Hasidism. Certain Hasidic sects require women to shave their heads when they marry and wear wigs in public, he explained. Contact between the sexes is so strictly regulated that some Hasidic men are forbidden even to look at women in the street.

Such ultraconservative practices seemed all the more striking in juxtaposition with the sexy, white-hot diamond trade. As we turned onto Schupstraat, we saw large, retractable metal posts, which regulate the flow of vehicles into the tightly secured half-square-mile Diamond District.

Our guide then explained the basics of diamonds, which were made of pure carbon billions of years ago. Diamonds are found in areas of volcanic activity, along riverbeds and, occasionally, by the sea. Australia now produces the most diamonds in the world, though not of the highest quality, followed by Botswana, a source of wonderful diamonds, Heymans said, then Siberia, Zaire and South Africa. The legendary De Beers company in London handles distribution of about 80% of the world’s diamonds, many of which are ultimately traded and crafted in Antwerp.

You don’t find many glitzy displays of diamonds in shop windows. Most buildings here have unprepossessing facades. But behind them are the city’s High Diamond Council, which regulates the industry, and four diamond exchanges, where deals are made.

Increasingly, you see a wide international mix of dealers in the Diamond District, as the hegemony of the Orthodox Jews has yielded to Russian, Lebanese, Armenian, Zairian and especially Indian merchants. The Indians are originally from the state of Gujarat, interconnected by marriage and blood, practitioners of the Jain religion, which espouses nonviolence and vegetarianism. They brought sweet milky chai tea, curry and the Gujarati language to the neighborhood, along with many traits shared by their Orthodox Jewish colleagues, such as industriousness and the inclination to keep the business in the family. Now 65% of Antwerp’s diamond trade is conducted by Jains.

Next we visited the nearby Diamond Museum, where we marveled over reproductions of famous diadems and studied the changing styles of gemstone settings. Lunch at a cafe on the border of the Diamond District followed. Over salad and a choice of quiche we talked about what sorts of diamonds we’d buy if we could, then went to Pelugi.

By then I was thinking I ought to have a pair of diamond earrings. I crowded up to the desk where Peter Stevens of Pelugi was showing diamond jewelry with bright, clear stones crafted to catch the light. Now we cut to the chase. One woman bought a bracelet, another a ring worth thousands.

That’s when I spotted a pair of diamond studs, simple, tasteful, perfect, about a half-carat each. And only about $2,000. I imagined them on my earlobes, then blinked, also imagining the charge on my credit card bill.

Susan Spano also writes “Postcards From Paris,” which can be read at www.latimes.com/susanspano.