Guild Houses

The fame and beauty of the Market Place do not lie only in the Town Hall and the King’s House, but perhaps first of all in the presence of a remarkably beautiful set of elaborately decorated guild houses. The name “guild houses� is most commonly used for the entire set of houses, although in reality they did not all belong to the medieval guilds. Some of the houses were always privately owned. During the Middle Ages and later every city in the Low Countries had guilds or corporations which always had a stake in the city administration. Because they were very wealthy and politically powerful , their importance had to show in their houses in which they regularly met to discuss new rules or regulations within their specific trade or commerce.
The guild houses were rebuilt between 1695 and 1700. Their architectural style is a local interpretation of Italian Baroque. The classicism here seems to be merely overlaid on the traditional architectural design. There is a rich variety of shapes, forms and designs in the grouping of these houses. Although the guild houses are large, they lack the monumentality which comes from a greater simplicity and unity of design. The small scale of the ornamentation, and the richness with which it is applied, give the buildings the intricacy of lace. The individualism of each building prevents the ensemble from being read as a single design. This is not necessarily a flaw, and in fact is characteristic of architecture in Belgium, which almost always emphasizes the individual or small group over the mass.
The MOUNTAIN OF THABOR - The ROSE -The GOLDEN TREE - The SWAN (Now a renowned restaurant “La maison du Cygne (house of the swan). Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels stayed here in 1847 during meetings of the Deutsche Arbeiterverein (the German labourers union) – The STAR (In the Middle Ages this house was occupied by the Amman, the Duke’s representative in the city. Under the arcade is a statue of Everard ‘t Serclaes, a medieval Brussels hero. Legend has it that striking the arm of the statue brings luck. )