Unique Places in Brussels

Mont des Arts is the side of the hill between the Royal Palace and the old town of Brussels. Large palace-like buildings are connected together filled with museums, the main library, the city archives, a couple of theatre, the concerthall and everything that has to do with ART. The terrain is impressive, especially when one walks through it and only guesses what's all inside. Visiting everything will take weeks. Cultural weeks! A little bonus is in a street pointing towards the town halls tower topping over the roofs. It's a mechanical clock with carillion, in which many puppets starts moving around the hour.

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Parts of the church, Onze Lieve Vrouw ter Kapellekerk, date back to the 12th century. Of course the church has been added to and renovated in the intervening years. One of the most interesting additions was in 1708 when a bell tower in blue stone was added to the main tower.

Address: Place de la Chapelle

If you feel like going to a movie theatre in Brussels there are too many to mention and most choice is in the huge complexes with about 20 or more films playing at the same time.
But please, help our cosy and lovely low cost cinemas out. You can find some great cinema's in Brussels with wooden seats and lower prices. They even show the non commercial movies. It's really an experience not to miss if you're a film lover.

But some of them are X-rated so inform about the movie :)

Styx is one of the cosy ones...

Sweet and white lambic beers have become hard to track down in today's Brussels, but you can enjoy the authentic tradition in the city's secondd-oldest establishment La Bécasse. Your horse and your page will have to wait outside :-))

11 rue de Tabora 1000 Brussels

It was the first church I visited in Brussels (I like architecture), it was near by my hotel in the northern part of the centre of the city. The church was built in XVIII century and it replaced the chapelle of XV century that is now the right wing of the church. Interior of the church is very nice.

Hi,

If you like music like festivals or jazz.If you like moovies do as the locals do and have a look what is going on in Flagey.

The building is an well known Art Deco building, was the first radiostation and is nicely situated on the étangs d'Ixelles that is surrounded by beautiful Art Nouveau and Art Deco buildings.Have a nice drink at the café Flagey.

There are all sort off things going on .Its a famous Art Academie 'La Cambre'and there are moovies and festivals.As the programalways change have a look first on www.Flagey.be
Will put a picture later

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When standing on one of the hills surrounding the center of Brussels, one can always see the dome of the Basilica in Western direction.

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart (situated in the Suburb of Koekelberg) is labeled "the national Basilica of Belgium". It was built to remember the 75th anniversary of the Belgian independence.

In 1905 king Leopold II laid the first stone. According to the plans of architect Langerock it was to become a gigantic neo-gothic church. The initial plans were stopped at the beginning of World War I. Only in 1919 the construction would continue. However, by then the developers had changed their plans and architect. A new architect, called Van Nuffel, was asked to construct a modern prayerhouse. To the people of Brussels and Belgium it seemed that the Basilica would never be finished. Moreover, the construction of the church depended entirely on donations made by believers and these donations did not always yield the expected funds. The church was eventually finished in the late 1960's with the construction of a dome and dedicated to the war victories of 1918 and 1944.

The interior decoration is in 1930's Art Deco style with use of marble. Since March 1997 visitors can climb into the dome of the Basilica from where one can have a beautiful panorama over Brussels and its surrounding area.

The Berlaymont building was in use in 1960 and was meant to house the seat of the European Commission. The space in Brussels was scarce and yet they wanted to have these EC offices as close to the city centre as possible.
There was this park, at the end of the Rue du Loi/Wetstraat, which was property of a cloister named “Les Dames du Berlaymont”. The property got bought by the Belgium state and named the building after the name of the cloister.
Architects whose names are related to this building are Jean and Andre Polak, De Vestel and Jean Gilson.
It has 4 wings in different length connected to each other and has16 levels all together enough to provide 240 000 square meter of space.
To some occults it has the shape of a broken cross and thus represents evil.

The building was meant to house 3000 employees. Offices; conference rooms; cafeteria; restaurant; TV-studios and all that is needed for good functioning of the EC were provided.

But when years passed by, we became conscious about he danger of asbestos used in construction. Asbestos proofed to be initiating cancer and very dangerous.
Unfortunately Asbestos was used in large scale in this building.
When law and regulation forbade the use of it, the Berlaymont building needed to be adapted to the new rules. Cleaning up started in 1991 and only September 2004, far overdue, the works were finished.
How much this will have cost Belgium will only be known when the EC will have paid back the 552 879 207 Euro for buying the building. The renovation itself must be esteemed around the 670 000 000 Euro.

The Berlaymont building is one of the many buildings in the EU area Leopolds Park.



Part of the info (amounts and names of the architect) is found on the website provided with this tip.