The gilded guild houses
Baroque façades rebuilt in four years after the 1695 bombardment.
Celuici — CC BY-SA 4.0 · VitVit — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Ray Swi-hymn from Sijhih-Taipei, Taiwan — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Ray Swi-hymn from Sijhih-Taipei, Taiwan — CC BY-SA 2.0
Early morning to photograph it nearly empty, then return at night when the gilded façades are lit — two entirely different experiences. In December it hosts the Christmas tree and the sound-and-light show, and in even-year August the Flower Carpet (paid access to the Town Hall balcony to see it from above). Avoid summer midday when it is packed.
The Town Hall is visited on limited guided tours (book at the tourist office on the square itself). The King's House opposite holds the Brussels City Museum with the original Manneken Pis statue. The guild houses are mostly restaurants, cafés and the chocolate and beer museums — you enter as a customer.
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The Grand-Place is the heart of Brussels and one of the world's most beautiful squares — an enclosed rectangle ringed on every side by gilded baroque façades of the old guild houses, the Gothic Town Hall with its pointed spire (96 metres), and the "King's House" facing it. UNESCO-listed since 1998, and its first impression when you enter from the narrow lanes stays with you: the square opens suddenly like a gilded painting. The irony is that this beauty was born of destruction: the French bombarded the city in 1695 and razed the square, and the guilds rebuilt their houses in just four years, competing in splendour — hence the harmonious façades with their statues and gold. Each house has a name and emblem: the She-Wolf, the Boat, the Sack, the Wheelbarrow, the Swan. Free and always open, loveliest at night when lit, and in August of even years when the famous Flower Carpet covers it (a million begonias). From it branch the lanes of chocolate shops and restaurants, with Manneken Pis a few steps away.
Baroque façades rebuilt in four years after the 1695 bombardment.
A 96-metre spire topped by Saint Michael — a fifteenth-century masterpiece.
A million begonias covering the square every two years in August.
Grand-Place, 1000 Brussels