A thousand years in twelve periods

From marshland to a first town

The name says it all: Bruocsella, 'the dwelling in the marsh'. At the bottom of the Senne valley the river splits into arms and forms islands, just where boats could go no further upstream.

Tradition dates the town's birth to 979, when Charles of France, Duke of Lower Lotharingia, had a castrum built on the island of Saint-Géry. The date comes from later chronicles and is still debated, but the site makes sense: a ford, a river port and, soon, the great trade road from Bruges to Cologne crossing the Senne right here.

In the 11th century the counts of Leuven take control of the settlement. In 1047 Lambert II founds a chapter of canons on the hill above the valley and brings the relics of Saint Gudula there: the origin of the collegiate church of Saint Michael and Saint Gudula, today's cathedral. Higher up, on the Coudenberg, the counts build a castle. The lower town of the merchants and the upper town of power are already in place, and will stay so for a thousand years.

Brabant, cloth and two city walls

As Dukes of Brabant, the lords of Leuven make Brussels one of their main towns. It grows rich on luxury woollen cloth exported across Europe.

In the 13th century a first stone wall about four kilometres long, with seven gates, encloses the town. In 1229 Duke Henry I grants it a keure, a charter of rights. Power lies with the 'Seven Lineages', patrician families, while the craftsmen organised in guilds demand their share. The revolts of 1303 and 1306 are crushed, but in 1421 the guilds finally win a place in the city government.

In 1356 the Count of Flanders occupies Brussels. Everard t'Serclaes retakes it in a night raid. The lesson is learnt: from 1357 to 1383 a second wall, eight kilometres long, is built. It traces the 'Pentagon' still visible today in the line of the inner ring road. It encloses far more than the town: gardens, fields and convents long fill the space between the two walls. The Gothic rebuilding of the collegiate church, begun in 1226, goes on for three centuries.

The court of Burgundy

In 1430 Brabant passes to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. Brussels becomes a favourite residence of one of the most lavish courts in Europe.

The Coudenberg palace is enlarged. Its great ceremonial hall, the Aula Magna, is built in the 1450s. Below, the town asserts its independence with a monument to match: the Town Hall, begun in 1402, receives in 1449–1455 its 96-metre spire designed by Jan van Ruysbroeck, topped by Saint Michael slaying the devil. Around it, the Grand-Place, a market since the 12th century, fills with guild houses.

It is also an artistic golden age. Rogier van der Weyden becomes official town painter in 1436, and Brussels tapestry workshops supply courts across Europe. In 1477 Duchess Mary of Burgundy marries Maximilian of Habsburg: the Low Countries pass into the Habsburg orbit.

Charles V, an empire ruled from the Coudenberg

Born in Ghent in 1500 and raised in Mechelen, Charles V inherits the Low Countries, Spain and its colonies, then the Empire. In the Low Countries he lives in the Coudenberg palace, and Brussels becomes the capital.

From the 1530s the central institutions of the Low Countries settle in the town. While the emperor is away, his sister Mary of Hungary governs from Brussels, from 1531 to 1555. The nobility builds its mansions on the heights, around the palace and the Sablon. In 1549 a great procession, the Ommegang, is held in honour of Charles and his son Philip. Its re-enactment still parades across the Grand-Place every summer.

The town needs direct access to the sea. Authorised by the emperor, the Willebroek canal is dug from 1550 to 1561: it links Brussels to the Rupel, and so to the Scheldt and Antwerp, making the town a port. On 25 October 1555, in the Aula Magna of the Coudenberg, an exhausted Charles V abdicates the Low Countries in favour of his son Philip II. Witnesses say the hall was in tears. It marks the end of a reign and the start of a crisis.

In 1563 Pieter Bruegel the Elder moves to the working-class Marolles. He paints his last masterpieces there and is buried in the church of Notre-Dame de la Chapelle.

Revolts, archdukes and bombardment

Philip II's religious policy sets the Low Countries ablaze. The Duke of Alba arrives in 1567 with his troops and a special court, the 'Council of Troubles'.

On 5 June 1568 the Counts of Egmont and Hornes, two great Catholic lords who had pleaded for moderation, are beheaded on the Grand-Place. The revolt spreads: from 1577 to 1585 Brussels lives under a Calvinist regime, until Alexander Farnese retakes it. The Southern Netherlands remain Spanish and Catholic; the North becomes the Dutch Republic.

Under the Archdukes Albert and Isabella (1598–1633) peace returns and the Counter-Reformation covers the town with Baroque churches. In 1619 Jérôme Duquesnoy casts the Manneken Pis. In 1672 the medieval wall bristles with bastions against modern artillery.

It is not enough. From 13 to 15 August 1695, to draw the Allies away from the siege of Namur, the French army of Marshal de Villeroy bombards Brussels on the orders of Louis XIV. About four thousand buildings are destroyed, nearly a third of the town, including almost all of the Grand-Place. The Town Hall and a few façades survive. The guilds rebuild the square within a few years, in the Baroque style admired today.

The Austrians and the city of the Enlightenment

With the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) the Southern Netherlands pass to the Austrian Habsburgs. Brussels remains a capital, now of a province ruled from Vienna.

On the night of 3 to 4 February 1731 the Coudenberg palace burns down. Its ruins are left for decades. The very popular governor Charles of Lorraine (1744–1780) makes Brussels a small capital of the Enlightenment. On the ruins of the palace the architects Barré and Guimard lay out a neoclassical square, Place Royale (1775–1782). The dukes' hunting ground, the Warande, becomes Brussels Park. Facing it stands the Palace of the Nation, now the federal parliament.

Emperor Joseph II's heavy-handed reforms spark the Brabant Revolution of 1789. The United Belgian States, the first declaration of independence, last only a year.

French, then Dutch

Conquered by the Revolutionary armies, the country is annexed to France in 1795. Brussels is reduced to the chief town of a department, the Dyle.

Church property is sold and many convents disappear. In 1810 Napoleon orders the demolition of the now useless ramparts. In their place, from 1818, wide tree-lined boulevards are laid out: the inner ring, completed around 1840.

After Waterloo, some twenty kilometres south, the Congress of Vienna creates the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815 under William I. Brussels shares the role of capital with The Hague. The king modernises the town: a new Théâtre de la Monnaie (1819), the Botanical Garden, the Charleroi canal.

Capital of a new country

On 25 August 1830, at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, an aria from the opera La Muette de Portici stirs up the audience: the crowd pours out and the revolt begins.

At the end of September the fighting against the Dutch troops centres on the Park. Independence is proclaimed on 4 October. On 21 July 1831 Leopold of Saxe-Coburg takes the oath on Place Royale and becomes Leopold I, the first King of the Belgians: the origin of the national holiday.

The young capital modernises at full speed. On 5 May 1835 the first passenger train on the Continent links Brussels to Mechelen. The Royal Galleries of Saint-Hubert open in 1847. A new aristocratic district, the Leopold Quarter, grows to the east. Along the canal, Molenbeek becomes the industrial 'little Manchester'. A land of exile, Brussels welcomes Karl Marx, who writes the Communist Manifesto (1848) there with Engels, then Victor Hugo in 1851.

The monumental Brussels of Leopold II

The Senne, now an open sewer, poisons the lower town. Mayor Jules Anspach has it covered between 1867 and 1871 and Parisian-style boulevards laid out in its place.

The Stock Exchange (1873) dominates the new central boulevard. On the Galgenberg hill the architect Joseph Poelaert builds the Palace of Justice from 1866 to 1883, the largest building of the 19th century, clearing part of the Marolles to do so. In the neighbourhood, 'architect' is said to have become an insult.

Leopold II (1865–1909) wants a capital worthy of his ambitions: the park and arcades of the Cinquantenaire (1880–1905), Avenue de Tervueren, the Royal Greenhouses of Laeken. These great works were partly financed by the exploitation of the Congo Free State, the king's personal property, at the cost of massive violence against the Congolese people. The city still carries a difficult memory of that era.

At the same time Brussels invents Art Nouveau. In 1893 Victor Horta builds the Hôtel Tassel. Paul Hankar and Gustave Strauven follow, and façades of iron and glass bloom in Ixelles, Saint-Gilles and Schaerbeek. The world's fairs of 1897 and 1910 draw the world.

Two occupations, two Expos and a trench

On 20 August 1914 the German army enters Brussels. Mayor Adolphe Max refuses to collaborate. He is deported and becomes a national hero.

Between the wars come the garden cities (Logis and Floréal in Watermael-Boitsfort) and the rising basilica of Koekelberg, begun in 1905 and completed in 1970. In 1935 the World's Fair at the Heysel celebrates a century of independence. On 10 May 1940 the city is occupied again. It is liberated on 3 September 1944.

Meanwhile the centre lives through an endless building site: the North–South Junction, meant to link the two main stations by a tunnel under the city. Expropriations begin in 1911 and whole neighbourhoods disappear. The trench gapes for decades, until the opening on 4 October 1952 and Horta's Central Station.

Expo 58, the first world's fair after the war, draws some 41 million visitors around the Atomium, an iron crystal enlarged 165 billion times. The city modernises for the car: tunnels, flyovers, urban motorways.

Capital of Europe, at the price of 'Brusselisation'

In 1958 the institutions of the European Economic Community and Euratom settle in Brussels, provisionally in principle. The Berlaymont, seat of the Commission, is completed in 1967. The same year NATO moves to Evere.

The Leopold Quarter fills with offices. In the north the 'Manhattan' plan flattens a working-class district for towers that will never all be built. In 1965 Horta's Maison du Peuple, an Art Nouveau masterpiece, is demolished despite international protests. Planners coin a word for this free-for-all: 'Brusselisation'. In response, residents' committees and heritage groups emerge, such as ARAU in 1969.

The pre-metro opens in 1969 and the first metro line in 1976. Meanwhile Belgium becomes federal amid tensions between French and Dutch speakers. In 1989 Brussels gains its own status as a region.

One region, nineteen municipalities, the whole world

Created in 1989, the Brussels-Capital Region brings together nineteen officially bilingual municipalities, with its own parliament and government.

Europe takes root: the European Parliament has held sessions here since the 1990s, and the European Quarter becomes a global decision-making centre. On 22 March 2016 attacks hit Zaventem airport and Maelbeek metro station, killing 32 people. The city recovers and keeps changing: a pedestrian centre in 2015, a revived canal, new parks. The Sonian Forest becomes a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2017.

Brussels is now one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world: more than 180 nationalities live here. Its people happily call themselves zinneke, after the stray dogs that roamed along the little Senne: a proud mix.