Grand Place

I began my tour to grand place from the Royal Palace walked by the Old English and next to the Royal Library, eventually reaching the Grand Place. When crossing by Old English a person can see perhaps one of the nicest views of the place from the far.

Here you can clearly see majestic city hall tower, the statue in the park, and the nice houses in between the city hall and the park – it all looks amazing. The lawns look manicured and clean, one can see some ads, but they all are tastefully down.

However, as one gets closer to the place, one comes across a series of the low-price, fast-food restaurants and this tourist shops which are filled with low quality touristy goods. All this gives you impression of the place being exploited and touristy rather than historical and majestic.

All of the iconic Brussels symbols can be found on practically anything, starting from the wine-opener, to plates, to magnets, and t-shirts. In my opinion, this takes away from the integrity of those symbols by making them look like a means to an end for shop owners to get money off you any way the can.

When you finally enter the Grand Place, you see how incredible it is. The Maison du Roi with its finely crafted sculptures, in its gothic style, overwhelms your senses. The City Hall with the incredibly tall tower and the finely crafted statues on the side of this gothic building amazes you. In the south-eastern part of the plaza, there are fine examples of the Louis XIV style. However, the red and green stripped canvasses take away so much from the beauty of this place. All the sudden it looks like something that can be found in the factious streets of Las Vagas among the other remakes such as Venice or Paris. Which physically amazes you, but it feels devoid of any spirit – just an empty box in the word that becoming more and more globalised and generic. In other words, it looks gimmicky and cheap and that clashes greatly with ceremonious and grand design of the building and the place itself.

At the exit that leads to La Bourse there are more of these gimmicky shops selling all the touristy stuff that you will never use. There are few diamond stores in between. However, they look so shabby, that to this day I still cannot believe they carry luxurious diamonds. They look like cheap quickie stores back in Canada, where you can get all your junk food and pop, or make a copy of a key. In other words, they look like back street merchants, which do not inspire you with confidence, rather than prestigious diamond vendors.