La Grand-Place

I was enjoying the beautiful city center of Brussels. These seems to be a very common theme in European cities but each time I visit a new one, it never fails to charm me. The city center of Brussels is no different this time. The buildings in the city center were all very well preserved. It has bowed down to the pressures of commercialization but I don’t think it was distasteful. After all, you would want a lot of life in a city center, right? It is with this that we suddendly stepped into what is arguably Brussels, most important place – La Grand-Place.

You probably don’t need to know French to know how important this place is. One look at the square tells you why it is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It opens up to a large square surrounded by beautiful buildings on all four sides. La Grand-Place or Grote Markt in Dutch is one of the most important sites in Brussels, it also happens to be the one of the most beautiful ones. You can imagine that this place used to be the center of life medieval Brussels. There used to be markets here where people would naturally gather. The town hall is also here with the impressive belfry which towers above everything else.

Being a place of such importance, the square naturally became a target of attacks. Interestingly, attacks on the square was used by the French a bait to draw away attacking forces from another part of the country. I’m not sure how effective the attacks were since the main target of the attacks, the town hall remained standing.

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