Place Royale & Coudenberg Palace: Beneath the Throne

Why is it significant?

Look across the pristine neoclassical facades of Place Royale, anchored by the grand Corinthian portico of the Church of Saint-Jacques-sur-Coudenberg and the heroic equestrian bronze of Godfrey of Bouillon, first crusader King of Jerusalem.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Look across the pristine neoclassical facades of Place Royale, anchored by the grand Corinthian portico of the Church of Saint-Jacques-sur-Coudenberg and the heroic equestrian bronze of Godfrey of Bouillon, first crusader King of Jerusalem. Yet the most astonishing secret of this noble royal esplanade lies hidden beneath the paving stones directly under your boots, where centuries of royal splendor were buried and preserved in time.

For seven centuries, this commanding hilltop was crowned by the Palace of Coudenberg, the residential citadel of the Dukes of Brabant, the Dukes of Burgundy, and Habsburg Emperor Charles the Fifth. It was in the palace's colossal Aula Magna banquet hall that Charles staged his theatrical abdication in fifteen fifty-five, weeping as he resigned his global empire to his son Philip the Second before a gathering of stunned European royalty.

On a freezing night in February seventeen thirty-one, a catastrophic fire erupted in the royal governor's private apartments, sparked by overheating candles and unattended hearth fires left burning in the winter chill. Fanned by fierce gales, the inferno consumed centuries of priceless art treasures, royal tapestries, and medieval state archives, leaving the palace a charred shell that smoked for days across the snowy hilltops.

Decades later, Austrian administrators decided to bury the smoking ruins rather than rebuild them. Workers filled the lower chambers with rubble, flattened the hilltop, and erected this neoclassical forum directly over the buried ducal halls. Today, visitors can descend beneath the square into an extraordinary underground archaeological site, walking through Emperor Charles' grand reception hall and strolling along medieval Isabelle Street beneath city traffic.

Walk northwest past the statue of Godfrey of Bouillon and step toward the balustrade overlooking the landscaped terraced gardens and sweeping vista of the Mont des Arts.