European Quarter in Brussels

5 February 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, EU blog post series, European Union Reading Time:  16 minutes

Rue de la Loi © flickr.com - Euro Pictures/cc-by-2.0

Rue de la Loi © flickr.com – Euro Pictures/cc-by-2.0

Most of the European Union’s Brussels-based institutions are located within its European Quarter (French: Quartier Européen, Dutch: Europese Wijk), which is the unofficial name of the area corresponding to the approximate triangle between Brussels Park, Cinquantenaire Park and Leopold Park (with the European Parliament’s hemicycle extending into the latter). The Commission and Council are located on either side of the Rue de la Loi at the heart of this area near Schuman railway station and the Robert Schuman Roundabout.   read more…

Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren

28 January 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  6 minutes

© EmDee/cc-by-sa-3.0

© EmDee/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Royal Museum for Central Africa or RMCA (Dutch: Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika or KMMA; French: Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale or MRAC; German: Königliches Museum für Zentralafrika or KMZA), also officially known as the AfricaMuseum, is an ethnography and natural history museum situated in Tervuren in Flemish Brabant, Belgium, just outside Brussels. It was built to showcase King Leopold II’s Congo Free State in the International Exposition of 1897.   read more…

Belgian Comic Strip Center in Brussels

10 January 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  7 minutes

© TADOR/cc-by-sa-3.0

© TADOR/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Belgian Comic Strip Center (French: Centre belge de la Bande dessinée; Dutch: Belgisch Stripcentrum) is a museum in Brussels, Belgium, dedicated to Belgian comics. It is located at 20, rue des Sables/Zandstraat, in an Art Nouveau building designed by Victor Horta, and can be accessed from Brussels-Congress railway station and Brussels Central Station. The building was designed in 1905 by the world-famous architect Victor Horta, in Art Nouveau style, and served as a textile department store, the Magasins Waucquez. After Waucquez’s death in 1920, the building began to languish away, and in 1970, the firm closed its doors. Jean Delhaye, a former aide of Horta, saved the building from demolition, and by 16 October 1975, it was designated as a protected monument. Still, the building was in bad shape and victim to a lot of vandalism.   read more…

Manneken Pis in Brussels

3 January 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  8 minutes

© C.Suthorn/cc-by-sa-4.0

© C.Suthorn/cc-by-sa-4.0

Manneken Pis (Dutch for ‘Little Pissing Man’) is a landmark 55.5 cm (21.9 in) bronze fountain sculpture in central Brussels, Belgium, depicting a puer mingens; a naked little boy urinating into the fountain’s basin. Though its existence is attested as early as the 15th century, it was designed in its current form by the Brabantine sculptor Jérôme Duquesnoy the Elder and put in place in 1618 or 1619.   read more…

Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert in Brussels

17 December 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Shopping Reading Time:  6 minutes

© flickr.com - William Murphy/cc-by-sa-2.0

© flickr.com – William Murphy/cc-by-sa-2.0

The Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries (French: Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert, Dutch: Koninklijke Sint-Hubertusgalerijen) is an ensemble of three glazed shopping arcades in central Brussels, Belgium. It consists of the Galerie du Roi or Koningsgalerij (“King’s Gallery”), the Galerie de la Reine or Koninginnegalerij (“Queen’s Gallery”) and the Galerie des Princes or Prinsengalerij (“Princes’ Gallery”). The galleries were designed and built by the architect Jean-Pierre Cluysenaer between 1846 and 1847, and precede other famous 19th-century European shopping arcades, such as the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan and The Passage in Saint Petersburg. Like them, they have twin regular facades with distant origins in Vasari‘s long narrow street-like courtyard of the Uffizi in Florence, with glazed arched shopfronts separated by pilasters and two upper floors, all in an Italianate Cinquecento style, under an arched glass-paned roof with a delicate cast-iron framework. The complex was designated a historic monument in 1986.   read more…

Palace of Laeken in Brussels

31 October 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks Reading Time:  7 minutes

© Chemical Engineer/cc-by-sa-4.0

© Chemical Engineer/cc-by-sa-4.0

The Palace of Laeken or Castle of Laeken is the official residence of the King of the Belgians and the Belgian Royal Family. It lies in the Brussels-Capital Region, 5 km (3 mi) north of the city centre, in Laeken (part of the City of Brussels), and sits in a large private park called the Royal Domain of Laeken. The palace was built between 1782 and 1784 for the Governors of the Habsburg Netherlands, and was originally named the Palace of Schonenberg. It was partly destroyed by fire in 1890, after which it was rebuilt and extended. Significant modifications were undertaken at the beginning of the 20th century during the reign of King Leopold II. Nowadays, it is often referred to as the Royal Palace of Laeken or Royal Castle of Laeken. The Palace of Laeken should not be confused with the Royal Palace of Brussels, in central Brussels, which is the official palace (not residence) of the King of the Belgians and from which state affairs are handled. It is served by Stuyvenbergh metro station on line 6 of the Brussels Metro.   read more…

Atomium in Brussels

25 October 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  6 minutes

© flickr.com - Christian K./cc-by-2.0

© flickr.com – Christian K./cc-by-2.0

The Atomium is a landmark building in Brussels, Belgium, originally constructed for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair (Expo ’58). It is located on the Heysel/Heizel Plateau in Laeken (northern part of the City of Brussels), where the exhibition took place. Nowadays, it is the city’s most popular tourist attraction, and serves as a museum, an art centre and a cultural place.   read more…

Hasselt in Belgium

18 October 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  7 minutes

© Wout Rietman/cc-by-sa-4.0

© Wout Rietman/cc-by-sa-4.0

Hasselt is a Belgian city and municipality, and capital and largest city of the province of Limburg in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is known for its former branding as “the city of taste”, as well as its local distelleries of Hasselt jenever (gin), the Hasselt Jenever Festivities, Limburgish pie and the Hasselt speculaas. The municipality includes the original city of Hasselt, plus the boroughs of Sint-Lambrechts-Herk, Wimmertingen, Kermt, Spalbeek, Kuringen, Stokrooie, Stevoort and Runkst, as well as the hamlets and parishes of Kiewit, Godsheide and Rapertingen. On 01 July 2022 Hasselt had a total population of 80,260 (39,288 men and 40,972 women). Both the Demer river and the Albert Canal run through the municipality. Hasselt is located in between the Campine region, north of the Demer river, and the Hesbaye region, to the south. On a larger scale, it is also situated in the Meuse-Rhine Euroregion.   read more…

Ardennes or Oesling in Belgium, France and Luxembourg

28 September 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  6 minutes

Frahan and the Semois river in Belgium © Jean-Pol GRANDMONT/cc-by-sa-2.5

Frahan and the Semois river in Belgium © Jean-Pol GRANDMONT/cc-by-sa-2.5

The Ardennes, also known as the Ardennes Forest or Forest of Ardennes, is a region of extensive forests, rough terrain, rolling hills and ridges primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, extending into Germany and France. Geologically, the range is a western extension of the Eifel; both were raised during the Givetian age of the Devonian (382.7 to 387.7 million years ago), as were several other named ranges of the same greater range. The Ardennes proper stretches well into Germany and France (lending its name to the Ardennes department and the former Champagne-Ardenne region) and geologically into the Eifel (the eastern extension of the Ardennes Forest into Bitburg-Prüm, Germany); most of it is in the southeast of Wallonia, the southern and more rural part of Belgium (away from the coastal plain but encompassing more than half of the country’s total area). The eastern part of the Ardennes forms the northernmost third of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, also called “Oesling” (Luxembourgish: Éislek). On the southeast the Eifel region continues into the German state of the Rhineland-Palatinate. The trees and rivers of the Ardennes provided the charcoal industry assets that enabled the great industrial period of Wallonia in the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was arguably the second great industrial region of the world. The greater region maintained an industrial eminence into the 20th century, after coal replaced charcoal in metallurgy.   read more…

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