The Brussels City Museum hosts the story of the city over the centuries, with thousands of artifacts and artworks, but the building itself is as much part of the story as the contents. While its apparent age is an illusion, its history is not.
For a start, in language-divided and language-conscious Belgium, it has two names. In Flemish it’s the Broodhuis, or Bread House, while in French it’s the Maison du Roi, or King’s House. The first building, dating to the early 1200s, was a wooden hall where bakers sold their bread. In 1405, it was replaced by a stone building, used only a short time before the sale of bread shifted to door-to-door sales.
The vacant building was taken over by the Duke of Brabant and took on the name of Duke’s House, though no duke or royal ever lived there—it was filled with courts and offices in competition with those in the Town Hall across the big square we know now as Grand Place (or, in Flemish, Grote Markt or Big Market). The back-and-forth struggle between nobles and merchant guilds continued for a couple of centuries, with the city taking over the building at one point, then losing it again to the dukes.
In the mid-16th century, when the area was ruled by the King of Spain, Charles V had the building town down and replaced with a new building, in Flamboyant Gothic, enlarged by taking over adjoining spaces. That’s when it became known as the King’s House. But that’s also not the building we see today.
The French bombardment of Brussels in 1695 and the fires that followed did so much damage that the building had to be basically recreated from scratch, but funds were short, and the work wasn’t completed until 1767. No longer Flamboyant Gothic, it was now a Flemish-Italian Baroque building.
Many significant events took place in or in front of the Maison du Roi, including trials and public executions, including that of now-national hero Frans Anneessens, a leader of Brussels guilds who was beheaded in 1719 by Brussels’ new Austrian rulers (yes, they too had their turn) for helping organize a popular rebellion against the rulers, who were revoking local government laws and privileges and imposing new taxes.
When France, under Napoleon, took over what is now Belgium, they declared the building a national asset; between then and the final fall of Napoleon it housed courts and a prison, rehearsal space for a ballet and even served as storage for horse feed for British cavalry after Waterloo. It then fell into private hands, and was sold to the city in 1860.
And that’s when the building we know today began. Plans were made by the city architect working with the city archivist to faithfully re-create the 16th-century building in all its neo-Gothic glory—at a cost of 2 million francs, or about $1.2 billion in today’s U.S. money. Building took nearly 20 years, and one of its first tenants—and now the only one—was the city museum.
So, the building as we know it today is a ‘fabulous fake,’ like the ersatz-medieval New Town Hall in Munich, built starting in the same period. That period also saw other cultural changes in Brussels, including the creation of the Brussels Fête, pictured below, which replaced several different local fairs that had been held for centuries.
And now we head upstairs, for other exhibits. The elegant arrangement of stained glass shows the shields of different noble families and territories that are now, loosely at any rate, ‘Belgian.’ The height of the display gives you some idea of the scale and ceiling heights of the building, which has no elevators.
The development of the city, from the central core shown in the detailed relief map to the sprawling city of today with its network of distinct ‘municipalities’ is shown through a series of paintings and descriptions.
This painting may at first glance look mid 19th century, but it was actually made in 1948-49 when the entire neighborhood this side of the church was demolished to allow construction of a tunnel to put tracks for the Gare du Midi underground.
An unbuilt proposal from 1937 for a new Royal Library. A significantly less adventurous design was chosen.
One of Brussels’ prides of the 19th century, the Parque du Cinquantenaire, was built near the Royal Palace to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Belgium as a nation in 1880. Also a product of 1880, this patriotic scene of Francois Van Campenhout singing the Belgian anthem La Brabançonne, which he composed in 1830.
Another gallery examines Brussels’ connection to water—starting with the now largely-buried Senne River and continuing with its later canals and aqueducts.
And there’s attention to the city’s monuments and famous buildings…
Among the monuments, of course, is the perhaps best-known one—and one which also has a connection to water: Manneken Pis. The original of the famous rude boy is here, along with the cast from which the present copy was made in the 1960s. The cast was made in 1630 from the 1619 original. Gross as it may seem to some, the fountain was originally a source of drinking water.
Along with the statue, the museum has a long wall devoted to art, satire and cartoons featuring the pissing boy. They range from strong political comment to mild smut to serious commentary on the world and famous figures. Have fun looking them over!
And we’ll finish with a real survivor and a real “Bruxellois”—the Archangel Michael, who stood atop the tall tower of the Town Hall for over 500 years, from 1455 to 1996, surviving the 1695 bombardment and five centuries of weather. He was replaced with a new copy made by the Fonderie de Coubertin, a French foundation that helps train new artisans in traditional metalwork and other crafts.
