Upper Town

Uptown Brussels bears the hallmarks of two rulers, Austrian Charles of Lorraine and Leopold II, Belgium's empire builder. The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, which distributed bits of Europe like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle at the end of one of the Continent's many wars, handed the Low Countries to Austria. Fortunately for the Belgians, the man Austria sent here as governor was a tolerant visionary who oversaw the construction of a new palace, the neoclassical place Royale, and other buildings that transformed the Upper Town.

The next large-scale rebuilding of Brussels was initiated by Leopold II, the second king of independent Belgium, in the latter part of the 19th century. Cousin of Queen Victoria and the Kaiser, he annexed the Congo for Belgium and applied some of the profits to grand urban projects. Present-day Brussels is indebted to him for its wide avenues and thoroughfares.