Place Royale, Brussels
The Place Royale is one of oldest architecturally consistent and monumental public squares, as well as an excellent example of 18th-century urban architecture. Rectangular and symmetrical in shape, it measures 77 by 113 metres (253 by 371 ft), and is entirely paved. In its centre stands an equestrian statue of Godfrey of Bouillon. It is also flanked by the Church of St. James on Coudenberg, as well as some of the main museums in the city.
The Rue de Namur/Naamsestraat enters the square from the south, the Rue de la Régence/Regentschapstraat from the south-west, and the Rue Montagne de la Cour/Hofbergstraat and the Mont des Arts/Kunstberg from the north-west. This area is served by Brussels-Central railway station, as well as by the metro stations Parc/Park (on lines 1 and 5) and Trône/Troon (on lines 2 and 6).
History
Early history
The Place Royale was built on the former site of the Place des Bailles/Baliënplein, the main market square adjacent to the former Castle and then Palace of Coudenberg, which was the residence (and seat of power) of the counts, dukes, archdukes, kings, emperors or governors who, from the 12th century to the 18th century, exerted their sovereignty over the Duchy of Brabant and later over all or part of the Burgundian and then Spanish and Austrian Netherlands. This first square, whose initial enclosure was made of wood (1434), was provided in 1509 with a new stone fence designed by the court architects Antoon I Keldermans and Antoon II Keldermans.
The palace burned down on the night of 3 February 1731 in a fire that took much of the original royal complex. Funds were not available for rebuilding, so for more than forty years, it remained in a state of ruin, known as the Cour brûlée ("Burnt Court"). Several projects for the redevelopment of this space were proposed, including the reconstruction of a palace, which did not go beyond the stage of sketches, for lack of money. The construction of a new palace also seemed to be all the less necessary since, in the meantime, the court had moved to the Palace of Orange-Nassau, on the site of today's Palace of Charles of Lorraine. In 1769, the idea germinated to clear and level the ruins of the Place des Bailles and to convert it into an esplanade intended for military parades. The plan was on the verge of completion in 1772, when another project rendered it obsolete.
Clearance and development
It was only in 1774 that Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine, Governor-General of the Austrian Netherlands, proposed replacing the ruins with a monumental royal square inspired by French models such as the Place Stanislas in Nancy (1755) and the Place Royale in Reims (1759), of which it is almost an exact replica. The project was approved that same year by Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, who authorised the demolition. If at the beginning, this space, intended to be decorated with a statue of the governor, was sometimes called the Place de Lorraine ("Lorraine Square") in his honour, it is finally the name Place Royale ("Royal Square") that was retained, according to the predominant model in France, which appeared more suitable to represent political power.
Construction of the new buildings around the square took from 1775 to 1782, using the neoclassical design of the French architects Jean-Benoît-Vincent Barré, who drafted the basic project, and Gilles-Barnabé Guimard, who received that commission in 1769 and who carried out the detailed plans. The first draft of the project, designed by the engineers-architects Louis-Joseph Baudour and Claude Fisco had planned to keep the Gothic chapel of the former palace, which had been spared by the fire. Due to the architectural clash with the surrounding neoclassical buildings, however, it was pulled down. This plan was modified around 1780 by the Austrian landscape architect Joachim Zinner, who imagined connecting the square to the new Palace of Charles of Lorraine and Brussels Park (housing a statue of Empress Maria Theresa, which was never carried out). The new district, known today as the Royal Quarter, and designed on a structure connecting these three strategic points, also aimed to relieve congestion in this part of the city.
The former statue of Charles Alexander of Lorraine, which stood at the centre of the square, was made by the Flemish sculptor and architect Peter Anton von Verschaffelt. It showed the governor standing, dressed as a Roman general draped in a consular mantle, attending to the affairs of state. French revolutionaries toppled the statue when they entered Brussels in January 1793. Replaced during the brief Austrian restoration, this new statue was also knocked down by the French, who this time melted it down, turned it into coins, and planted a "Liberty tree" on its site. This tree was itself felled in 1814, during the fall of the Napoleonic Empire.
19th and 20th centuries
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In the following centuries, official ceremonies and political demonstrations were occasionally held on the square. Cavalcades were organised there in honour of Napoleon in 1810. It is still there that was celebrated the inauguration of William I as ruler of the Netherlands on 21 September 1815. During the Belgian Revolution in 1830, a barricade was erected across the eastern exit of the square next to the current BELvue Museum, facing Brussels Park, with two cannon positioned on it. On 21 July 1831, King Leopold I took the oath as the first King of the Belgians before members of Congress on a platform in front of the Church of St. James on Coudenberg. The funerals of King Leopold III and Prince Charles, prince-regent between 1944 and 1950, also took place on the square.
Remaining empty for several decades, from 1848, the centre of the square was once again occupied by a monument (still present today), an equestrian statue of Godfrey of Bouillon, built at a time when the young Belgian State was in search of patriotic landmarks. The blue stone posts connected by iron chains that originally lined the square disappeared in the middle of the 19th century and were replaced by pavements.
By the turn of the 20th century, the Place Royale increasingly became a hub of intense traffic, first with the addition of a horse-drawn tramway (later electrified), then through the rise of the automobile; the statue having roundabout function, from 1921, for north–south and east–west traffic. In 1951, the façades and porticoes lining the square were recognised for their architectural and historical interest, and were definitively protected from any modification by a classification order on the Belgian Heritage List.
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