Mechelen – a little known Belgian gem
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Belgium is underrated as a holiday destination. We tend to pass through, or fly over, but there are many places worth a visit. Mechelen is one of them. It is not far from Brussels, about 25 kms, and only 11 minutes by train from Brussels airport! Flying to Brussels is not easy from the north here, unless you go down to Edinburgh, but there are many flights daily from Inverness and Aberdeen to Amsterdam, and there are easy train connections from the airport to Mechelen. It is easy to access by road, if you go by ferry, or train through the channel tunnel, changing in Brussels.
Go visit:
Mechelen used to be the centre of Christianity in Belgium, and this has left it with a great many fascinating buildings, and historic churches with paintings by Rubens and Van Dyck in them.
Just one of the many things that I liked about Mechelen is that it is not over-run with tourists. They have around 200,000 tourists a year, mostly from the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and France – we have not discovered it yet! Of course, many of the tourists come relatively short distances, so are more like day trippers. The town has a local feel to it, a “liveable” town that is genuine, and the people have the time and interest to talk to you – and most seemed to talk English perfectly.
In the centre of the town is the Cathedral, with its tower, St. Rumbold’s Tower (St. Rumbold was the Irish monk who came her and brought Christianity around the year 600 AD). The tower is good fun to visit; you can climb up the 538 steps to the top for great views out over the flat landscape. It is 97 metres high, and has six floors, so that you can take a break and catch your breath on the way up. It has a tremendous set of bells. In 1922 the Royal Carillon School was established here, and on Mondays at 8.30 pm From June to September, they play bell concerts that reverberate all over the city.
After climbing the tower, you will probably feel like something to eat and drink – be warned though – their food portions are generous! The specialities are fish, sausages, cakes, cheese and chocolate – and beer. There is a campaign here “Beer in Women’s Hands”. This goes back a long way.
The beguines were a community of women, not nuns, but Christian. Some say it started when men went off on the crusades and didn’t return, leaving a “surplus” of ladies. Others say that if you were well to do, your daughters could either marry who ever you specified, or become a nun – if they didn’t like this choice, they could join the Beguines, as could widows. These ladies were industrious, sometimes had wealth, and the organisation grew. They ran industries, and also large hospitals which were badly needed in those days. It was these ladies who started brewing beer. They fed it to the patients in the hospital – as the water was not fit to drink. The last Beguine lady died in 2003. Back in 1467 King Charles V was so impressed with the 900 plus Beguines who had turned out to greet him when he came to Mechelen, that he granted them tax exemption status for their beer – providing it was all “used” on their premises – and maybe it was not always kept within the bounds of the Beguinage…….. Locally they say that the patron saint of brewers is St. Arnold. He was a bishop, and at that time there was an outbreak of bubonic plague. He put his staff into a copper brewing pan. After that, anyone who drank the beer was cured of the plague. His statue shows him with a long wicker basket on his arm – this is what was used to filter beer in those days.
All this beer and gin and now whisky has, maybe, influenced the nickname of Mechelen residents – they are called “Maneblusser” which roughly translates as “Moon extinguishers”. Back in 1687, a local decided to set of home after a session in a bar. As he was passing the tower – he saw that it was on fire! He raised the alarm, and the inhabitants turned out – yes there was flickering light on top of the tower – so they organised a human chain up all the 538 steps and started passing buckets of water up. When the men finally reached the top, they found that it was not on fire, it was the moon shining through the mist. They will never live down trying to put out the moon!
The central square is the old fish market. Margaret of Austria, who governed the Low Countries very successfully, credited with starting the “Golden Age”. She was born in Brussels and lived and died in Mechelen. She hated the smell of the fish, and kept asking for the market to be moved to a different site – the council finally agreed to do this in 1530, just after she died. To celebrate the independence of Belgium in 1830, towns and cities were asked to put up a statue to a famous person – Mechelen is the only one to put up a statue to a woman, in 1849, and Margaret of Austria’s statue is still proudly there, by the first parliament building. When the parliament outgrew this, they moved across the road to a grand building. Across the square, (the Grote Markt, or big market) an ornate building gradually grew. The rich man who promised to pay for it turned out to not have the money, so construction stopped for a long time. Then it was eventually completed and the Post Office moved in. They soon became fed up with the several offices and rooms, so swapped with the parliament, or council, who now use this ornate building as their third “home”.
The old fish market is flanked by ornate facades of typical Flemish architecture that looks like the old shops and houses have been there for centuries. Unfortunately, during World War 1 the damage to the buildings was severe, very few survived. In the 1920s they were rebuilt as they were before. Around the square are some unusual fountains, rectangular columns with fish on the top, with water coming out of the fishes’ mouths. There are also strange large metal hatches in the middle of the roadway. The nearest bridge over the canal has three arches- or four arches if you are coming the other way. This is not the effect of the beer. The fourth arch is a side canal that tunnels under the main road. The hatches would be opened and the goods for the shops lifted out- very “eco” urban deliveries.
It is interesting to stroll through the winding narrow streets of the old town. You come across many surprises. One is the old Refuge of Tongerlo Abbey. Today this wonderful building houses (since 1889) the De Wit tapestry works. You enter through a door in a large wooden gateway, to a garden with beds of plants and flowers that were found in patterns in 16th century tapestries. Today tapestries are no longer manufactured here, but De Wit’s is very busy repairing and renovating tapestries from all over the world. The work is extremely complex and painstaking. To add threads where old ones have rotted away is not easy; the new ones will be a different colour shade, strength, tension and will not fade at the same rate. Priceless tapestries arrive and have to be carefully cleaned, catalogued and worked on. A visit to this world renowned specialist works, in its ancient building, is an eye opener.
There is a walk way along the canal – which is actually the river Dijl. This is a good way to see parts of the town. There is the unusual modern statue of a young man on a block, holding a flower behind his back, facing a larger block that has a face coming out of it and a sheet of music paper. This commemorates that Beethoven’s ancestors lived here, before his grandfather emigrated to Germany. His grandfather taught music in a wee school, with odd shaped walls – which is still there. You will see a group of three wooden houses, all former inns, with ornate scenes from the Bible on their facades, and many other old houses and plenty of places to stop for a meal or a drink. There is the Bruul – the main shopping street. Prices here are good, about the same or lower than the UK. There are also no less than 12 public conveniences, all located at council owned properties, so they are all looked after and acceptable.
There are many more things and places to explore. For example, just outside Mechelen is the Ursuline boarding school for young ladies, at the splendidly named village of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Waver, usually just called “Waver”. This large imposing set of buildings was once THE school for young ladies of position. The Nuns decided to build a fantastic winter garden, Art Nouveau style, in 1900. The rich parents could meet their girls here when they came to visit. A tour round this grand school is very educational – in all senses. There is a long corridor with small classrooms ranged down each side – but they are not classrooms, they each hold a piano, and up to 34 girls at a time would be in their wee rooms practicing the piano – the noise must have been wonderful. Some of the pianos have been renovated and once again students are using them.
There are just 14 hotels in Mechelen. I stayed in the Martin’s Patershof Hotel . This is a top class hotel, in a converted Carmelite and subsequently Franciscan, church. It is very well done, and claimed that should the Church ever want to use the building as a church again, it is designed that the hotel can be dismantled and removed, leaving the bare church again. It is handily placed for the town centre. Many of the rooms have pointed stained glass windows!
Mechelen was the capital of furniture for all Belgium from 1880 to 1930. Today there is still the famous Mechelen chair made here. The wooden frame has straw seating hand woven into the frame.
There are lots of good eating places, perhaps it is unfair to mention a couple, but the Grand Café Den Grooten Wolsack is excellent, as is the Cosma Foodhouse.
There is even more to explore in and around Mechelen. It really is one of Belgium’s gems, well worth a visit.
