Charleroi Belfry, Charleroi, Belgium

Charleroi Belfry is part of the City Hall, designed by architect Joseph André in 1936. It is a perfect blend of Classicism and Art Deco. The 70-metre-high belfry can be accessed by climbing 250 stairs and was built using blue and white stone and bricks. It is crowned with a small bronze tower. The last three levels are reserved for the chambers of the 47 bells forming the carillon. Every fifteen minutes it chimes out a few bars of folk songs by Jacques Bertrand, the bard of Charleroi. This belfry is a UNESCO world heritage site.

References:

Wallonie-Bruxelles Tourisme

User Reviews

Jonathan Debondt (2 years ago)

Philippe Keirsbulck (2 years ago)

Anthony DUFRANE (2 years ago)
Le beffroi (70 m), classé au Patrimoine mondial de l'Unesco, a été construit en 1936 d'après les plans de J. André et de J. Cézar. Point d'orgue de la visite, la Salle du conseil et des mariages, avec ses gigantesques lustres en cristal de Val-St-Lambert, ses vitraux et sa série de sept panneaux peints par Jos De Smedt. Dans les combles, le musée Jules-Destrée évoque les multiples facettes de ce politicien, homme d'État, avocat et écrivain

Bella Janssens (2 years ago)

Giovanni Barbieri (3 years ago)
Très beau et grand bâtiment qui domine la place du Manège à Charleroi

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Photo from Flickr, copyright Frans.Sellies

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Kromeriz Castle and Gardens

Kroměříž stands on the site of an earlier ford across the River Morava. The gardens and castle of Kroměříž are an exceptionally complete and well-preserved example of a European Baroque princely residence and its gardens and described as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The first residence on the site was founded by bishop Stanislas Thurzo in 1497. The building was in a Late Gothic style, with a modicum of Renaissance detail. During the Thirty Years' War, the castle was sacked by the Swedish army (1643).

It was not until 1664 that a bishop from the powerful Liechtenstein family charged architect Filiberto Lucchese with renovating the palace in a Baroque style. The chief monument of Lucchese's work in Kroměříž is the Pleasure Garden in front of the castle. Upon Lucchese's death in 1666, Giovanni Pietro Tencalla completed his work on the formal garden and had the palace rebuilt in a style reminiscent of the Turinese school to which he belonged.

After the castle was gutted by a major fire in March 1752, Bishop Hamilton commissioned two leading imperial artists, Franz Anton Maulbertsch and Josef Stern, arrived at the residence in order to decorate the halls of the palace with their works. In addition to their paintings, the palace still houses an art collection, generally considered the second finest in the country, which includes Titian's last mythological painting, The Flaying of Marsyas. The largest part of the collection was acquired by Bishop Karel in Cologne in 1673. The palace also contains an outstanding musical archive and a library of 33,000 volumes.

UNESCO lists the palace and garden among the World Heritage Sites. As the nomination dossier explains, 'the castle is a good but not outstanding example of a type of aristocratic or princely residence that has survived widely in Europe. The Pleasure Garden, by contrast, is a very rare and largely intact example of a Baroque garden'. Apart from the formal parterres there is also a less formal nineteenth-century English garden, which sustained damage during floods in 1997.

Interiors of the palace were extensively used by Miloš Forman as a stand-in for Vienna's Hofburg Imperial Palace during filming of Amadeus (1984), based on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who actually never visited Kroměříž. The main audience chamber was also used in the film Immortal Beloved (1994), in the piano concerto scene.

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