Notre-Dame des Victoires au Sablon: Jewel of Flamboyant Gothic

Why is it significant?

Marvel at the delicate flying buttresses, stone gargoyles, and towering lancet windows of Notre-Dame des Victoires au Sablon, gleaming against the Brussels sky like carved bone.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Marvel at the delicate flying buttresses, stone gargoyles, and towering lancet windows of Notre-Dame des Victoires au Sablon, gleaming against the Brussels sky like carved bone. Constructed across the fifteenth century in the purest Flamboyant Brabantine Gothic style, this breathtaking church was financed and championed by the Grand Guild of Crossbowmen, who practiced on the sandy slopes of this hill and turned their guild chapel into one of the grandest religious monuments in the Low Countries.

The church owes its fame to an extraordinary fourteenth-century legend. In thirteen forty-eight, a devout Antwerp woman named Beatrijs Soetkens experienced repeated mystical visions of the Virgin Mary directing her to take a miraculous wooden statue from Antwerp Cathedral. Beatrijs carried the statue aboard a modest river vessel, which sailed miraculously down the Senne River without oars, sails, or human guidance directly to the crossbowmen's training ground at the Sablon.

The Duke of Brabant and municipal magistrates welcomed the sacred relic with triumphant fanfares, establishing the annual Ommegang procession that still marches across Brussels each summer in magnificent medieval costume. Inside the church, eleven monumental stained-glass windows soar fourteen meters toward the vaulted ceiling, bathing the nave in radiant hues of gold, crimson, and sapphire that illuminate the delicate stone carvings of angels and saints adorning the pillars.

Beyond the high altar lie two opulent Baroque burial chapels built for the princely House of Thurn und Taxis. In fourteen ninety, this visionary noble family was appointed imperial postmasters by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian the First, establishing Europe's first organized postal courier network right here from their palatial residence in Brussels, revolutionizing communication across the entire continent with relay riders and post horns.

Step out through the church's south portal and cross Rue de la Régence into the manicured hedges and wrought-iron gates of Square du Petit Sablon.