Lower Town

During the latter half of the 10th century, a village began to emerge on the site of present-day Brussels. A population of craftspeople and traders settled gradually around the castle of the counts of Leuven, who were later succeeded by the dukes of Brabant.

In 1430 Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, took possession of Brussels, then known as Brabant. During this era, Brussels became a center for the production of tapestry, lace, and other luxury goods. The city's market-town past can still be seen in the names of clusters of streets in the center of town—rue du Marché au Fromage was once where cheese makers set out their stalls, and you can imagine the feathers flying on rue du Marché aux Poulets (chicken-market street).

By 1555, when Charles V abdicated in favor of his son, Philip II of Spain, the Protestant Reformation was spreading through the Low Countries. Philip, a devout Catholic, dealt ruthlessly with advocates of the Reformation. In 1568, his governor, the Castilian Duke of Alva, capped his Council of Blood (which condemned suspected heretics without trial) with the execution of the Counts of Egmont and Hoorn, leaders of a popular rebellion. A monument to them stands in the Petit Sablon square.

In 1695, on the orders of French King Louis XIV, Marshal Villeroy bombarded the city with red-hot cannonballs in retaliation for the extended siege of Namur. The ensuing fires destroyed 4,000 houses, 16 churches, and all of the Grand'Place, with the exception of the Hôtel de Ville. The buildings around the square were immediately rebuilt, in the splendor seen to this day.

In 1713 the Spanish Netherlands came under the rule of the Austrian Habsburgs. Despite the influence of Enlightenment theories on the province's governors, nationalist feeling had set in among large sections of the populace. These sentiments were quashed by neither the repressive armies of Napoléon nor the post-Waterloo incorporation of Belgium into a new Kingdom of the Netherlands. On August 25, 1830, a rousing duet from an Auber opera being performed at La Monnaie inflamed patriots in the audience, who burst onto the streets and raised the flag of Brabant. With support from Britain and France, independence came swiftly.

Since then, Brussels has undergone image upheavals almost as significant as the impact of this century's two World Wars. At the turn of the 20th century, the wide boulevards and Art Nouveau buildings symbolized a city as bustling and metropolitan as Paris. However, from the 1950s onward, Brussels became a byword for boring: a gray, faceless city of bureaucrats where cavalier neglect of urban planning created a new word—bruxellization—for the destruction of architectural heritage. Now the pace of European integration (and the wonders of the city's food and drink) has helped to restore the city's international reputation.