Museum of the City of Brussels 3.61

The Museum of the City of Brussels is a museum on the Grand Place in Brussels, Belgium. It is dedicated to the history and folklore of the town of Brussels, its development from its beginnings to today, which it presents through paintings, sculptures, tapestries, engravings, photos and models, including a notable scale-representation of the town during the Middle Ages.The museum features artifacts, paintings and tapestries from Brussels' history. There are two dioramas of the city of Brussels in its early days and as it began to flourish in the 1500s. One room presents the nearly 750 costumes of the Manneken Pis statue. It is open every day except Mondays from 10am to 5pm.Conceived in 1860 and inaugurated in 1887, the museum is situated on the Grand Place opposite the Brussels Town Hall, in a building in the Gothic Revival style, known as the Maison du Roi or Broodhuis . The building is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the square.The Brussels Town Hall was built on the south side of the Grand Place in stages between 1401 and 1455, and made the Grand Place the seat of municipal power. To counter this symbol of municipal power, from 1504 to 1536 the Duke of Brabant built a large building across from the city hall as symbol of ducal power. It was built on the site of the first cloth and bread markets, which were no longer in use, and it became known as the King's House, although no king has ever lived there. It is currently known as the Maison du roi in French, though in Dutch it continues to be called the Broodhuis, after the market whose place it took.