On Tuesday,
September 10th, our new King and Queen – Filip and Mathilde – made
their ‘Joyeuse Entrée’ in Wavre, the capital of the province of Waals-Brabant. Tradition
has it that a new sovereign visits the capital of the ten provinces of Belgium
within the months following the taking of the oath. The tour started on
September 3rd in Leuven (aka Louvain), capital of the province of
Vlaams-Brabant. It was a warm and sunny day and a nice crowd had gathered
around the town hall and along the route the royal couple would take after
their visit with the mayor, Louis Tobback, who is quite a colourful character,
never lost for words.
Our new sovereigns on the step of Leuven's town hall.
Photo: www.hln.be
Photo: www.hln.be
The visit
went very smoothly, despite a hundred or so die-hard republicans who want to
split up the country and install a president. Something I hope will never
happen in my lifetime …
Anyway, I
thought this event made a very nice excuse to post two photos of Brussels’ city
hall. The first one is an etching which was sent to me by my very loyal blog
follower, commenter and good friend ‘chm’. While staying in Paris last spring
and summer, he found this beautiful etching of the city hall dating from the 19th
century. When you compare it to its 21st century photo, you can see
that little has changed, despite the two world wars that have ravaged Europe, Belgium and the city of Brussels. Keats was so right when he wrote: “A
thing of beauty is a joy forever.”
The 19th century etching which was sent to me by chm.
A 21st century photo (www.blogvoyages.fr) Bruxelles' city hall.
The royal
‘Joyeuse Entrée’ will continue in the weeks to come. By the end of October the
new king and queen will have visited the towns of Mons, Liége, Namur, Arlon (in
the southern French speaking part of Belgium) and Gent (Ghent), Brugge
(Bruges), Antwerpen (Antwerp) and Hasselt, all located in the northern Flemish
speaking part of the country. Brussels is not on the list, as the city is the
king’s residence where he took the oath as 7th king of Belgium on
July, 21st.
Thank you
‘chm’ for the photo of the etching. It proved to be a great source of
inspiration for this ‘royal’ post.
P.S.
Weather has turned quite autumn-like lately. Lots of rain, only 15 to 18°C
during the day and 7 to 11°C during the night. Hope it will stay dry though for
the rest of the royal tour …
P.P.S. For my next post I will be returning to France ... I still have a lot of photos of my June vacation which I want to share with you.
3 comments:
Hi Martine,
You found the perfect photo for comparison with the engraving.
Long live to your new — and young — King and Queen!
I enjoyedd see it during our visit. Very impressive to say the least. Great comparison photos.
Chm, Thank you. It's one of the most photographed monuments of Brussels, so it wasn't too hard to find. I'll convey your best wishes to Filip and Mathilde, although I don't think I'll run into them soon :)
Bob, I enjoyed meeting you and Pat that day in Brussels and showing you around. I hope we can do this again soon!
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