After a shower and a breakfast, The Wandelgek checked out, but he was allowed to leave his luggage at the hotel, so he could spend one more day in Central Brussels.

Then he walked past Liberty Square because the coffee corner was closed on Sunday, toward the Colonne du Congrés and the external flame for the unknown soldier …

It was a bright blue sky day again …

The Congress Column has a total height of 47 m (154 ft). A spiral staircase of 193 steps inside the column leads to a platform, decorated with a lavishly carved balustrade, surrounding the pedestal of the 4.7-metre-tall (15 ft) statue of King Leopold I. The platform can accommodate 16 visitors but is no longer accessible for security reasons. The statue of Leopold was made by the sculptor Guillaume Geefs.

Designed by Poelaert and inspired by Trajan’s Column in Rome, the column commemorates the National Congress of 1830–31 which drafted the liberal Belgian Constitution of 1831. The important dates in the struggle for Belgian independence are engraved on column’s pedestal, together with the names of the members of the National Congress and the Provisional Government of Belgium, as well as important passages from the Constitution. The frieze is decorated with elegant foliage and on its four sides are represented Wisdom, Strength, Immortality and Glory.

As a memorial to the Belgian victims of World War I, an unknown soldier was buried at the foot of the monument on 11 November 1922. This unknown soldier was selected out of five unidentified soldiers from different battle sites by Raymond Haesebrouck, a veteran blinded in battle. The tomb is surmounted by an eternal flame.

After World War II, a second memorial plaque was added to the monument to honour the Belgian victims. In 1998, a third memorial plaque was dedicated to the Belgian soldiers killed in the service of peace since 1945.

On the base of the column, surrounding the pedestal, four sitting allegorical bronze female sculptures represent the major constitutional liberties enshrined in the Constitution of 1831: the Freedom of Association by Charles-Auguste Fraikin, the Freedom of Worship by Eugène Simonis, the Freedom of the Press and the Freedom of Education both by Joseph Geefs. Two monumental bronze lions by Eugène Simonis are placed in front of the monument. In 2007, during Storm Kyrill, the Freedom of the Press sculpture was blown down and later restored.

Surrounding the columns’ base are 4 huge bronze lions guarding it…

Don’t forget to walk toward the low wall behind the Column and enjoy one of the very best views over Brussels …

This view shows the rigourous impact of the great building projects that destroyed a lot of Brussels’ architectural history. Something I’ve tried to show you up close in the previous blogposts, but from afar it is seen best. In this blogpost however I want to show you more of Brussels’ history and how the city was before these building projects took place. The first visit to illustrate this is a visit to the:

Musée de la bande dessinée / Het stripmuseum

The Belgian Comics Museum is housed in a beautiful art nouveau style building, designed by Victor Horta himself. The museum collection and exhibitions are always fantastic, but so are the building’s exterior and interior.

Look at that gorgeous lamp post underneath the fantastic glass roof in the entrance hall …

Seeing this awesome drawing by François Schuiten, in the museum, showing us the previous destination of the building. It had been the Fabrics store of Waucquez. The sad story is that this is the only remaining department store designed by Horta. The others, such as the Innovation, have been thoroughly destroyed. Horta himself had become quite embittered by what happened to his beautiful buildings, not only demolition but also many ill-considered renovations. This drove him in 1939 to destroying half a ton of archive material and personel documents. The Wauquez department stores were built in the Zandstraat between 1903 and 1906. They were supposed to house a textile wholesaler. In 1989, the building housed the Belgian Comic Strip Museum.

The Wandelgek decided to first find out more about the relation of Victor Horta with the building and the city and to enjoy its architecture, before visiting the comics exhibitions. Of course the influence of and the drawings of Schuiten made it nonetheless a mix of comics and history.

The glass roof of the building is an intricate construction of a metal framework and glass. It spans quite a large space, specificly in the entrance hall …

Another beautiful drawing of François Schuiten, also from one of the Waucquez department stores…

The stairs, the materials, specificly the used marble and wood were fantastic…

There is a really beautiful restaurant named Brasserie Horta and The Wandelgek decided to go there for some more information and of course for a Belgian beer…

Everything breathed Horta and art nouveau …

Nothing was only functional, everything added to the decoration …

There were beautiful drawings decorating the walls …

Mozaique elements added to the already abbundant decoration …

There was also like a mini Horta exhibition of info panels and photographs on the walls …

Just photographing and enjoying myself …

Beautiful drawings by François Schuiten of the Volkshuis (right) and the Autrique house (left). A world of difference in attitude toward Horta architecture. The Volkshuis has been destroyed in 1965, the Autrique house has been saved around 1996 and François Schuiten had an active role in that.

Before the Waucquez Warehouse

The block carved stone shown beneath dates from 1664. It was found among the rubble on the site of the future Belgian Comic Strip Center in November 1988.

The carved date is a precise indication of the construction date of the building that stood on this site. This block (shown below) …

… is believed to be the keystone of an arch over one of the two side doors in the building, featured in the photograph below…

This building was a refuge for the St. Michel Abbey. City Archives point to the existence of this abbey from … 1663.

It can be observed that the general layout of the facade was retained by Victor Horta when he later designed the Magasins Waucquez for the same site.

A department store like no one builds anymore. The building is more than a hundred years old, the last semi‑industrial structure by Victor Horta that still survives. And in what condition! For the first seventy years of its existence, fabrics were sold here, just as Charles Waucquez and the successive owners of 20 Zandstraat had intended. The building witnessed the transformation of Brussels, in a district that undoubtedly had to suffer from the march of progress in the twentieth century, until the store closed its doors in 1970 and entered its hardest years. That was when new hope and new projects appeared. In 1984 the Federal State bought the building with the aim of breathing new life into it as a museum dedicated to the comic strip. That project took shape around 1980, with the approval and support of Hergé. The Belgian Comic Strip Center, inaugurated on 3 October 1989 in the presence of the royal couple, was not only meant to preserve the comic heritage within these walls. It was also meant to give new meaning, new life, to the windows, the arabesques, the curves and the light in this masterpiece by Victor Horta.

After having enjoyed some beautiful drawings by Yslaire,

The Wandelgek returned to his table to have that drink …

The mirroring windows outside are always intriguing objects to photograph …

Inside the focus changed to Belgian beer …

A Cornet from a special horn like glass in a wooden base could not be resisted 😋😋😋

Sitting there, nipping from my glass of Cornet, I suddenly felt a bit uneasy as if someone was watching me from behind …

🤣😂🤣😂

Next The Wandelgek visited the Comics exhibitions of the museum. The attentive readers of the whole blog series must have noticed the many comics walls that I visited on my walks. I missed out on one this visit because I visited it before in 2013:

I’d like to mention it again, because it is an important one regarding this blogpost series and for anyone wanting to visit the Obscure Cities. Its name is De doorgang/Le passage/The passage and it is an actual passage from Brussels to Brüsel. It was created in 1995 by François Schuiten at the Kolenmarkt (Coal Market).

Now for the exhibitions:

There were beautiful original drawings exhibited of some of my favorite comic book authors like e.g.:

Dany (Daniël Henrotin)

He and brilliant scenario writer Greg created the wonderful comic of Roze Bottel en Duifje Vleugelslag / Olivier Rameau et Colombe Tiredaile. This comic is older than the Obscure cities and it also has the aspect of passages in it although these are between the real world and an alrernative dream world. The drawings beneath are from Dany’s Dracula comic.

Jean-Claude Mézières

Together with Pierre Christin (script), Mézières started his most famous comic Ravian in 1967, after Goscinny proposed to make a science-fiction comic for his magazine Pilote. It became world famous and an inspiration source for George Lucas who created Star Wars in 1977.

 

Jean-Claude Servais

Servais created many comics with nature, its beauty and its protection as a main topic. Also Ardennnes legends and stories are often part of his books. His most famous comic books were those named Bosliefje, about a free-spirited young woman living amidst nature.

Another exhibition was about the Diary of Cerise / Dagboek van Cerise

I’m quite a fan of this series which is about a little girl Cerise who has a deep dark secret. She starts writing a diary about people she meets and in the beginning she trends to solve other people’s problems, but the focus shifts toward her own and her mother’s problems. Beautifully written and great art work.

Then The Wandelgek had seen enough and decided to leave.

Bollie and Billie were near the entrance. Another reminder of the stories he read in his youth…

There was a beautiful wall with portraits of comic book figures …

The Wandelgek left the Musée de la Bande Dessinée, on his way to a 2nd museum. He walked into the city center and via the Grass market passing the Saint Hubert Galleries ….

Arriving and the Grand Place. Beneath is the facade of the Radisson Hotel …

The Grand Place is a location which guaranteed always causes a jaw dropping moment…

Even on a cloudy day it is still the most brilliant square ever …

The many details are interesting and invite to do some research …

There are many statues and hold plating on the façades of the buildings …

The legend of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, raised by a shewolf.

The Wandelgek entered the Broodhuis in which he visited the:

Museum van de Stad Brussel (City Museum)

 

Het Broodhuis

The Maison du Roi is a building on the Grand Place of Brussels from the 19th century. This building now houses the Museum of the City of Brussels with a versatile collection from the history of Brussels. The dutch name broodhuis (House of bread) originates from the beginning of the 13th century, when there was a wooden construction on the Grote Markt where the bakers sold their breads. This wooden bread hall was replaced by a stone building in 1405. But at the beginning of the 15th century, the bakers started selling their breads through door-to-door sales, and the now free building was taken over by the then Duke of Brabant, who turned it into a kind of administrative center.

Inside there were several exhibitions and again the building itself was an eyecatcher too.

First there was a china exhibition with beautiful old examples of China, showing of how rich this town was was …

The building’s interior was nothing short of awesome. E.g. the large wooden staircase …

The light inside fell through beautiful stained glass windows …

Maquette of 17th century Brussels

The most interesting exhibition was on an upper floor and it was a permanent exhibition about the history of the city of Brussels. Piece de resistance is this large maquette of medieval (13th century) Brussels:

The Zenne river is yet unvaulted and even the harbor area as one of the areas where the city was developing is recognizable.

Beneath at the bottom a bit left of the center you can reconize the Goriks island (with the little church surrounded by a few houses) and another smaller island above in the Zenne river.

Saint-Géry Island (French: île Saint-Géry) or Sint-Goriks Island (Dutch: Sint-Gorikseiland) was the largest island in the river Senne in Brussels, Belgium. It was named after Saint Gaugericus of Cambrai, who according to legend, built a chapel there around 580. It ceased to exist as an island when the Senne was covered over in the late 19th century, and a former covered market, the Halles Saint-Géry/Sint-Gorikshallen, was built in its centre. Since the late 20th century, this building has been rehabilitated as an exhibition space.

The lower town is near the town walls (mostly left in the photo’s), the upper town is further away from those walls and more to the right.

Beneath is tge oldest part of Brussels, where the first development began at a monastery …

Beneath, just outside of the city gate is the Onze-Lieve-Vrouw ter Kapellekerk, which we visited during walk number 2 in the Marolles.

It shows how much Brussels has grown since.

After a last look at this beautiful scale model, …

… The Wandelgek moved to the photo exhibition about the vaulting of the Zenne river.

Vaulting of the Zenne river

Beneath is the first phase of this large project and the destruction and subversion it must have caused are clearly visible. To vault the river, everything bordering that river had to be removed.

It was not just the river itself that disappeared …

Beneath is a timeline of building projects in Brussels:

Brussels in maps

The map below shows the development of Brussels’ street network …

Brussels has an upper and a lower town which already indicates that there are elevation levels. This map shows where to find which elevations …

A map of Brussels’ surrounding landscape …

This map shows Brussels as it was around 1980 …

The Zenne river which is vaulted is shown in this map, which is a quaint curiosity …

This scale model shows the Sint Katelijne / Saint Catherine neighbourhood in the 17th century.

Beneath is a map of Central Brussels and it shows where the Zenne was or better is, but now vaulted. It also shows The Grand Place and the old pounds. A tiny compass rose shows where North is.

Now I got a bit creative and rotated the above map turning the N of the compass rose to the top. Then I changed the scale of the above map to one equal to a modern Brussels map. Next I filtered out the dark background color and made it see thru and eventually I positioned the above map on top of a modern Brussel’s map, thus showing where the Zenne and the old pounds, but also the islands were located. The result:

In the above map you can now see where the Zenne islands were and indeed the Goriks Square and Gorikshallen are at the Goriks Island. The map is a bit unclear about where the Zenne actually streams north east. Several sources say that it should be underneath the Anspachlaan, but it seems to be a bit beside that. Not sure whether this is a misstake or not.  The canals or ponds are beside the streets called Kaaien, which is an old word for Quays. It seems to me to be a correct representation.

Beneath is a map showing the location of the city walls …

The Maison du Peuple or Volkshuis in 1898, incedible that it got torn down in 1965 …

This is a historic scene in which the Belgian revolution against the Dutch rule started …

The Wandelgek went up all the stairs, all the way and finally reached the top of the Broodhuis …

A wonderfully crafted wooden beam roof was his reward and an Archangel was guarding the attic….

 

Risen from its ashes

In 1695 the was an attack on Brussels and a large bomb was fired upon the Grand Place. The façades of the city hall and the Broodhuis were among only a few façades that survived.

The fire was devastating …

 

After this destruction, the Grand Place was “rebuild” as good and as bad as humanly possible…

 

Façadism

Imagine the Grand Place at dusk—cobbles gleaming, façades bathed in the violet light as shadows lengthen. In the perspective of François Schuiten, the buildings are not merely stones arranged by time; they are petrified ambitions, melancholic pride, and the mute survivors of transformation. The Town Hall looms, its asymmetry a poetic flaw, speaking of human limits and the hasty corrections of history. Guild houses line the square, their gilded crests reflecting centuries of commerce, rivalry, and reinvention. Above, the carved faces of old nobility and allegorical virtues seem poised to impart secret wisdom into the gathering evening. Every façade is both memory and threshold—a border between what endures and what has been lost in the tides of urban change.

Brussels, as Schuiten might paint it, is a city in dialogue with its own reflection: the façades of the Grote Markt whisper of utopias and ruins, of the ceaseless struggle between conservation and invention. Here, architecture is destiny—every surface, every statue, every arcade aching to tell its story, awaiting the next observer who, like Schuiten, reads the city as a living, imaginative map

The façades in Brussels are not just surfaces; they are expressions of civic pride and resilience. After periods of devastation—such as the bombardment of 1695—the city rebuilt with intent, choosing to restore and embellish old styles in the face of modern trends. This restoration became a statement: façades in Brussels reflect collective determination to preserve identity in the midst of commercial expansion and architectural change. In Schuiten’s way of seeing, these façades are portals to parallel worlds, windows through which forgotten dreams and the essence of the city are perpetually visible.

Asterix and the Belgians

As a young child The Wandelgek fell in love with comic books and his favorite comic book series was Asterix. This French comic created by Rene Goscinny (script) and Albert Uderzo (drawings) is a brilliant story about a tiny Breton village of Gaulles who withstand Julius Caesar’s Roman armies, because of a magic drink that gives them super strength.

Asterix and his best friend Obelix are travelling the world and in one of the books they travel to Belgium because Caesar wrote down that the Belgians were the bravest tribe he had yet encountered. They disagreed wanting that title for themselves.

They visit a place where a family lived and the wife practitioned lace making.

After the sun runs out doors to piss in the bushes, it is clear we are in what will become Brussels in a few centuries…

Manneken Pis

There is the much photographed fountain of Manneken Pis in Central Brussels, but in this museum you can find and see the original statue.

And here it is:

Then The Wandelgek left the Broodhuis and walked toward the fake Manneken Pis.

Labradorstraat 26

En route he passed this comic mural, which is the one of Tintin /Kuifje by Hergé the father of the European style comic. He was the 1st European to make text balloon comics and Tintin was the 1st European text balloon comic. Before Kuifje met his counterpart Captain Haddock and he found a treasure which enabled him to buy Castle Moulinsart / Kasteel Molensloot, where he invited Tintin to come and live with him, Tin tin lived in Brussels at the Labradorstraat 26.

However, this was a non existing street in Brussels, just like many other streets named in Tintin do or did not exist. Nowadays there is actually a Labradorstreet in Brussels North, just like there is a Bakerstreet 221b in London and a Café Puskin in Moscow ;-). However there are many traces to be found in Brussels which seem familiar to those who read the books. This is because Hergé lived in Brussels all his life and he drew inspiration from his childhood memories of it …

 

This mural can be found in the Stoofstraat in Central Brussels …

Next stop was the fake Manneken Pis fountain for the tourists and the streetcorner never disappoints in showing you lots of tourists photographing or making selfies with the Manneken.

Much more interesting however is the Belgian Beer Café Just opposite Manneken Pis. It is one of my favorites due to the great variety of available draught and bottled beers and the wonderfully quirky interior. It’s name gives away a bit of what you can see inside. It has a Flemish/Dutch language name for a change, which I like a lot in mostly Walon/French language Brussels. It is named the Poechenellekelder.

Myself originating from the south of The Netherlands, I’m familiar with that word. In Maastricht you could find a Poechenellekelder too. It is not a café name, but it is the name for a handpuppet or wire driven puppet theater.

Poechenellekelder is a celebrated Brussels café, steeped in puppet theater history and famed for both its whimsical interior and immense, expertly curated beer selection, especially its impressive lineup of lambics.

Housed in a historic building steps from Manneken Pis, Poechenellekelder began in the 18th century with roots as a puppet theater—a heritage on vivid display today.

The interior is a feast for the senses: marionettes, comic strips, musical instruments, beer memorabilia, and whimsical decor drape every surface, creating an atmosphere both nostalgic and lively. Locals and travelers mix in the candlelit, wood-paneled rooms, where stories and laughter echo among Brussels’ centuries-old guilds and artful relics. This vibrant blend of history and quirky charm makes Poechenellekelder truly one-of-a-kind for anyone seeking authentic Brussels ambiance.

Renowned among beer aficionados, Poechenellekelder offers a dazzling menu featuring over 100 Belgian brews. Its lambic section is especially notable, with classics like gueuze, kriek, and fruited lambics—many sourced from the revered Cantillon brewery, including rare seasonals such as Fou’Foune, St-Lamvinus, and Lou Pepe.

The menu also includes traditional Oude Gueuze and Oude Kriek, providing a crash course in the region’s spontaneous fermentation traditions. Whether you’re a seasoned lambic enthusiast or curious to explore, the knowledgeable staff are happy to guide you to the perfect sip, and the selection is among the best you’ll find without a pilgrimage to the breweries themselves.

It is actually must 2nd favorite Beer Café in Brussels after Moeder Lambiek. Both are great beer cafés, however, Moeder Lambiek is even more specialized in rare Lambic beers.

The interior is wonderful and almost like a museum if puppet theaters and puppets …

In the cellar (kelder means cellar) is a theater with Red curtains…

It was time to return to the Hotel du Congrés and get my luggage before walking down hill to Brussels Central Railway Station.

I sincerely hope that I have been able through these stories, histories, walks and most important, photographs, express my love for the city of Brussels and for the work of François Schuiten.

Fini/Einde/The End