The Grand Place in Brussels was built following the architectural project created after the bombing of 1695 (the bombing ordered by Louis XIV of France who had destroyed the entire square with the exception of the Hotel de Ville).

The communal power and the King faced eachother in this extremely wide square. On the one hand we see the Hotel de Ville, a Gothic building with a tall and elegant tower, consisting of four floors decorated with turrets, balconies, windows, crowned by a stone spire pierced with a St. Michael and the dragon, patron saint of Brussels; the other the Maison du Roi, in fact, the covered market of bread, a wonderful neo-Gothic building with elegant porticos, loggias and balconies.

The other houses, one for each corporation, surrounding the Grand Place with their facades in a rich Renaissance style: the home of merchants, boatmen, archery, carpenters and coopers, lubricators and bakers, the Maison des Brasseurs, the Brewers' house, which houses a museum with cellars that show the tools and machines used by brewers from the seventeenth century.

Grand Place is a UNESCO World Heritage