''Cinema Rex'' was a cinema located at Keyserlei 15 in

Antwerp Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,

, Belgium. It opened in 1935 and was designed by

Leon Stynen Léon Stynen (15 July 1899 – 13 May 1990) was a Belgian architect, urban planner and designer, from Antwerp. Some of his buildings have been categorized as "refined" Brutalist architecture and modern architecture. He has been called one of Be ...

, a Belgian architect, modeled after large American movie theatres. On 16 December 1944 (the first day of the

Ardennes Offensive The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. The battle lasted from 16 December 1944 to 28 January 1945, towards the end of the war in ...

), at 15:20, a

V-2 rocket The V-2 (german: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit=Retaliation Weapon 2), with the technical name ''Aggregat 4'' (A-4), was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed ...

fired from The Netherlands ( Hellendoorn) by the SS Werfer Battery 500 directly landed on the roof of the cinema during a showing of ''

The Plainsman ''The Plainsman'' is a 1936 American Western film directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur. The film presents a highly fictionalized account of the adventures and relationships between Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jan ...

''. There were approximately 1,100 people inside the cinema and the explosion killed 567 people including 296 Allied servicemen (194 further servicemen were injured) and 11 buildings in total destroyed. It took nearly a week to dig all the bodies out of the rubble. It was the single highest death total from a single rocket attack during the war. Following the attack all public performance venues were closed and the town council ordered that a maximum of 50 people were allowed to congregate in any one location. The theatre was re-built in 1947 but closed in 1993 and was demolished in 1995.

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