From an eighteenth-century square to the burial ground of the 1830 revolution
Walk from La Monnaie to Place des Martyrs and discover how a residential square became a burial ground for the people who died in the Belgian Revolution.
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Brussels, Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium
INTRODUCTION
Turn off Brussels’ Rue Neuve into Rue Saint-Michel and the shopfronts give way to rows of pale façades. At the centre of Place des Martyrs, a marble figure rises above iron railings. Look down from the edge and you can see why the monument occupies so much space. A sunken court surrounds its base, with a burial gallery running around it.
The people commemorated here died during the Belgian Revolution of 1830. The square itself is older. Its orderly fronts belonged to a residential development built more than half a century before the fighting. A walk from the nearby opera house to the memorial takes in the weeks that separated the first riots from the decision to bury the dead here.
KEY HISTORICAL MOMENT
With fighting still under way, the revolutionary administrative commission chose the square, then called Place Saint-Michel, for a common grave. Its decision also called for a monument to preserve the names of the dead. The burial and the act of remembrance were planned together, days before the Provisional Government declared Belgian independence on 4 October.
ORIGINS
Before the houses went up, the site held a drying ground for cloth. The name Place de la Blanchisserie, used for a time under French rule, preserved a trace of that earlier use. The square had originally been named Place Saint-Michel, after the city’s patron saint.
The engineer and architect Claude Fisco planned a rectangle roughly 98 metres long and 47 metres wide. Brussels put 56 building plots up for sale in 1774. The buildings were completed in 1776, while the city still formed part of the Austrian Netherlands.
The buyers had to follow rules that went well beyond the outline of the square. The regulations governed foundations, drainage, shared walls and roof slopes as well as the way the fronts were composed and painted. As a result, buildings on separate plots read from across the square as a continuous architectural composition.
THE REVOLUTION
By 1830 Brussels belonged to the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, ruled by William I. Unemployment and a poor harvest deepened hardship, and the July Revolution in Paris helped stir unrest. In Brussels, riots broke out after a performance of Daniel Auber’s La Muette de Portici at La Monnaie on 25 August.
Local property owners organised a citizens’ militia in response. Its leaders sought administrative separation between north and south, and the king refused to concede. Meanwhile, volunteers arrived from outside Brussels, and the militia lost its hold on events.
Prince Frederik, William I’s younger son, led troops into Brussels on 23 September. The fighting centred on the area around Brussels Park. A revolutionary committee helped coordinate the volunteers, and the royal troops withdrew during the night of 26 to 27 September.
The choice of a burial ground gave the dead a place in the city they had defended. The square’s eventual name fixed the language of sacrifice onto an existing street plan. Its residential façades survived the change in purpose and still frame the grave.
ACROSS CENTURIES
The new state took shape while the memorial was still a promise. An electorate restricted by tax and other qualifications chose a National Congress in November 1830. The Congress adopted a constitution in February 1831, and Leopold I took the constitutional oath on Place Royale that July.
Architect Louis Roelandt drew up the design in 1836, and sculptor Guillaume Geefs supplied the statuary. The monument was inaugurated in 1838. Work on the carved decorations continued for about another decade. Blue limestone forms the structure, while figures and carved scenes in Carrara marble stand out against the darker stone.
The burial gallery runs around the monument in a square of its own. Its pale arches rest on darker stone supports. At street level the railings mark the edge of that lower space, so the monument can be read from above even when the steps are gated.
The city changed the setting around the monument several times. It installed fountains in 1841 and replaced them with basins in 1864. A redesign in 1980 replaced planted areas with new paving. The federal buildings agency later cleaned the stone surfaces and renewed the monument lighting in its 2019–20 renovation.
INTERESTING FACTS
The federal buildings agency records 466 names on 27 black marble panels in the gallery. The letters are bronze. The people commemorated came from Brussels and elsewhere in what became Belgium, and the list includes foreigners. The long sequence of panels gives individual names a place alongside the single figure that represents Liberty above them.
At the feet of Liberty lies the Belgian lion, with broken chains beneath it. The lion is a small detail beside the upright marble figure, and the chains sit lower still. From the square, try following the sculpture down from the figure’s head to its base. The broken links give the monument’s abstract idea a physical form.
One of the smaller memorials commemorates Jenneval, the stage name of the French actor and poet Louis-Alexandre Dechet. He wrote the first words of La Brabançonne, which became Belgium’s national anthem. An actor at La Monnaie, he joined the revolutionary army and was killed in October 1830. His memorial links the theatre to the fighting through a person who took part.
The memorial to Count Frédéric de Mérode was inaugurated in 1898. Henry van de Velde designed it and Paul Du Bois made the sculpture. Look for a portrait medallion of the count and a separate figure representing a volunteer. Both belong to a later generation’s account of the revolution, told in the Art Nouveau vocabulary of the late nineteenth century.
WHAT TO SEE & DO
Start outside the opera house on Place de la Monnaie, where the August performance took place. The building’s colonnade survived the fire that gutted the interior in 1855. Stand in the square to see the columns as a group and locate the theatre in relation to the streets around it.
From here walk north along Rue Neuve and turn into Rue Saint-Michel. The memorial comes into view at the end of this short side street.
At the Rue Saint-Michel entrance, pause before crossing to the centre. Look along the nearest row for repeated window openings and a cornice running above several houses. The alignment makes it difficult at first glance to tell where one property ends and the next begins.
Then turn across the square and compare the opposite side. Fisco’s design gave the whole space the formality of a single project, even though the plots had been sold individually.
Walk around the railings for views from more than one side. Four marble angels represent prayer, combat, victory and burial. The reliefs sit lower down the base and show scenes from the revolution. The difference in height is easier to judge from a corner of the enclosure, where you can see two faces of the base at once.
Look into the sunken court from the square. If the gates are open to visitors, the steps bring you closer to the reliefs and the name panels.
Head to the north end for Jenneval’s memorial, then cross to the south end for the de Mérode monument. The city moved the two memorials further apart during the 1980 redesign. Their present positions give each one space of its own.
At the south end, turn back for a view along the length of the square. From here the memorial to a single volunteer stands in the same sightline as the larger enclosure for the revolutionary dead.
WHY VISIT?
Place des Martyrs suits travellers who want to understand how Brussels marked the cost of independence. You can see the relationship between the grave, the sculpture above it and the houses that had been there before the revolution. The square is compact enough to take in from several sides in a short visit.
For a longer walk, continue to Brussels Park, where Prince Frederik’s troops took up position. The park puts the fighting on the map, while the square shows where the city chose to remember it. The Brussels history and travel guide helps fit both into a day in the centre.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Place des Martyrs, or Martelaarsplein in Dutch, is just off Rue Neuve in central Brussels. De Brouckère is a convenient stop on metro lines 1 and 5 and tram lines 4 and 10. Approach from Rue Neuve via Rue Saint-Michel. The route from La Monnaie uses the same approach.
Allow around 20 to 30 minutes for the square and its three memorials. Set aside 35 to 45 minutes if you include the short walk from La Monnaie and a look at the opera house exterior. These are editorial estimates. The square is a public space and the street-level visit is free.
Plan on seeing the monument from the square. The Visit Brussels listing for the crypt gives its location. For a visit below street level, check with Pro Belgica, which organises the September commemoration. The lower gallery is reached by steps. From the square you can still see the layout of the enclosure and much of the central sculpture.
For a walk that includes the former battlefield, head towards Brussels Park via Rue du Persil and the cathedral area. The route climbs from the lower town. If you also want to see inside La Monnaie, consult the opera house for visits or performances. The four stops here can all be seen from outside.
Location
Brussels, Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium
Site type
Historic square and burial memorial
Square built
1774–1776
Key event
Common grave designated on 25 September 1830
Memorial inaugurated
1838
Square designer
Claude Fisco
Neighbourhood
Off Rue Neuve, near De Brouckère
Suggested visit
20–30 minutes for the square (editorial estimate)
Plan a walk from the opera house to the square and its memorials.
EXPLORE MORE
Continue through Brussels and discover more of Belgium’s historic squares and civic buildings.
Build a longer walk around the Grand-Place, the Saint-Hubert Galleries and the royal district.
Explore how a building on Veurne’s market square served local government and justice.
Follow the story of a Flemish town hall that became a wartime headquarters.
Trace Belgium’s history through its market towns, guildhouses and civic monuments.
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