St. Alex Beguinage, Dendermonde, Belgium

The St. Alex beguinage (1288) consists of 61 houses built around a trapezoidal courtyard surrounding a small church. The beguinage is an island of tranquillity in the heart of town.

Similarly to the Belfry, the St. Alex beguinage has been proclaimed UNESCO World Heritage in 1998. To keep the memory of the beguines alive, one small house (nr.11 H. Bonifacius) has been furnished as an authentic beguine's home.

In 1975 the last beguine, Miss Ernestine De Bruyne, died. Her former home (nr. 25 H. Begga) holds a museum of folklore. Spread over three floors and a great many rooms, visitors will learn about housekeeping, work and recreation in the lives of former generations.

House nr. 20 disposes of a detailed historical documentation centre with a specialized library, photographs and slides concerning Dendermonde.

References:

Dendermonde Tourism

UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Belgium

User Reviews

Roby Thankachan (14 months ago)
The Beguinage Museum in Dendermonde is located in the house that inhabited Ernestine de Bruyne, the last beguinage of Dendermonde. In the same building there is also a museum of folklore. In many rooms, on three floors you can get to know the everyday life of the Dendermonde residents. Building No. 11 (H. Bobnifacius) has been decorated just like an authentic beguines home. It is extraordinary that this interesting museum can be visited for free.

Joris Van Damme (14 months ago)
Very quiet and peaceful place in the middle of the city center. Renovations are planned but not yet started. So the roads can be filled with puddles when it rains. Know that people live there so please respect their privacy.

Virginie Cohen (2 years ago)
A very nice place to take a short break , while being in the city of Dendermonde

Lindsay Geerts (2 years ago)
Oase v rust

Laura Roelants (3 years ago)
It's a great place to learn more about local history, and the lawn is nice to spend some time on a sunny day. They also added some art pieces by a local artist.

Featured Historic Landmarks, Sites & Buildings

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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