Ah! The Brussels Grand Place. So many books have been written about it, so many visits made, from one house to the next, from one pavement to the next. BrusselsLife has, on your behalf, met up with Jean Van Calck living encyclopaedia of this "Town Square" and its surrounding areas.
- In the Town Hall's interior courtyard, there's a star on the ground, which issued as the reference mark for the numbering of all the houses in all the streets of Brussels!- In 1986, the national football team, the Red Devils, reached the semi-finals of the World Cup in Mexico. Many still remember images of the Grand-Place, adorned in the Belgium's black, yellow and red!
- Every two years since 1971, the Grand-Place is embellished by a carpet of flowers. Several hundred thousand begonias are assembled to form a floral fresco on a particular theme of the moment.
- The Grand-Place Number 9 today houses a gourmet restaurant, Le Cygne. A certain Karl Marx, exiled and finding refuge in our liberal land, wrote his famous "Manifesto" there. Later, it was also there that the Belgian Labour Party was created.
- Since December 1998, the Grand-Place has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- But it wasn't so long ago that the Grand-Place was used as a gigantic open-air car park, with the traffic proceeding around it with gay abandon. Matthieu Lethé
