The present day Town Hall in Mechelan is situated on the Grote Markt:
It consists of two parts: the cloth hall with unfinished belfry and the Palace of the Great Council. Why wasn’t the belfry ever finished? The cloth trade went into decline in the fourteenth century and there wasn’t the money to complete the building. For two hundred years the belfry was no more than a shell, until it was eventually provided with a temporary roof in the sixteenth century. Temporary? That roof is still there.
The belfry is now a UNESCO world heritage site. On the right of the belfry you can see the oldest part of the town hall, the remains of the earlier cloth hall. On the left is the Palace of the Great Council. The Great Council? It never actually met here, because this wing was only completed in the twentieth century in accordance with the original sixteenth-century plans of the then leading architect Rombout Keldermans.
Every time we visit an old city center, Cherry, we always look for the Town hall. It almost never disappoints! This one is a fine example.
I am trying to imagine how it would be if the Belfry was complete
What beautiful architecture!
The architecture in Mechelen is fascinating. It is so varied.
It’s rather modest here compared to Bruges.
Did you visit Bruges Town Hall?
It’s really beautiful inside!
This is based on the Bruges Belfry but was not completed!! I saw parts of the Bruges Town hall, but due to the time of the year it wasn’t completely open.
Now this time I thought my short comment was long enough but no, it was still deemed “too short”, so instead of lengthening it like a trained money I am just going to take it back and stomp off in a strop with the world forever denied its brief wisdom… stomp, stomp, stomp (footsteps receding into the distance), so there…
And keep your thought to yourself and let a silly computer progamme (Wordpress) win???
I would never allow silly algorithm to defeat me
Hmmm…. but woulf I let a crafty lady provoke me into complying with her sly wish?
It’s a dilemma (but more fun than the original nugget of wit and wisdon, whatever it was).
“would I…”, that is
and “wisdom”
I do seem to be losing grip on the connection between my mind and my fingers (not that I would expect a judge to accept that defence, should it ever be needed).
That happens to me all the time
Don’t you just love this town-hall. It looks so Medieval, love the silhouettes. I ‘get it’ more and more why tourist love places like this and like many places in the Netherlands. They are different…..
We see these buildings all the time, and we don’t notice it anymore…. But I still love the beauty of the town, in which we live, Gorinchem http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorinchem if you change between Dutch and English you will get more pictures for the overview.
Thanks for the link to Gorinchem it looks a wonderful place to live. I see the similarities between the Belgian towns I have visited.
Also a mixture of old and new architecture side by side.
Breathtaking,but is that a forecourt in the front or what?
It is the grote markt:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_square
I’m liking this town hall and square a lot. Must be difficult in the day time getting photo of this as I’d imagine there would be loads of people about.
This was taken late afternoon on a Friday so I am guessing that the workers were still at work and the shoppers etc had already gone home.
Saturday morning it was buzzing, the market was in full flow and on Sunday it was heaving with people because the carnival was taking place!