Place des Martyrs: The Crypt of Independence

Why is it significant?

Step onto the quiet, symmetrical cobblestones of Place des Martyrs, an oasis of classical order framed by uniform white neoclassical townhouses with green wooden shutters.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Step onto the quiet, symmetrical cobblestones of Place des Martyrs, an oasis of classical order framed by uniform white neoclassical townhouses with green wooden shutters. Designed in seventeen seventy-five by court architect Claude Fisco, this square was originally named Place Saint-Michel to honor the city's celestial protector. The square was originally paved with smooth cobblestones and planted with four rows of linden trees, providing a harmonious residential haven for magistrates and noble families during the Austrian Habsburg administration.

The destiny of the square was violently rewritten in September eighteen thirty, during the bloody street fighting of the Belgian Revolution. Citizen militias, students, and workers barricaded the streets against Dutch royal troops; during four days of urban combat, four hundred and sixty-six Belgian freedom fighters fell in battle across Brussels. The fighting in September eighteen thirty reached its climax around the nearby Royal Park, where ordinary citizens armed with hunting rifles, pikes, and antique muskets drove the Dutch garrison out of the city.

The revolutionary provisional government chose this square as a solemn national pantheon, burying the fallen martyrs in an underground vaulted crypt directly beneath the center of the plaza. In eighteen thirty-eight, a monumental marble memorial by sculptor Guillaume Geefs was erected above the crypt, depicting a crowned figure of Liberty surrounded by a recording angel and the Belgian lion.

Descend the stone staircase into the subterranean crypt, where marble tablets carved with the names of the revolutionary dead line the silent gallery. The martyrs included doctors, weavers, teenagers, and foreign volunteers who gave their lives to establish Belgium as a sovereign constitutional democracy. Standing in this quiet sunken neoclassical square, you can feel the heavy solemnity of a young nation's founding sacrifice, preserved in stone amidst the bustling commercial center of modern Brussels.

Leave the square through the western archway onto Rue Neuve, Brussels' premier shopping thoroughfare, and enter the glass-vaulted arcade of Passage du Nord.