Black Tower

This guide to the Black Tower in Brussels follows a squat stone watchtower built in the early 1200s as part of the city's first defensive walls, and what happened to it once a bigger wall made it obsolete by 1357. It traces how the tower survived as a tavern called In the Tower, then faced demolition in 1887 during a slum clearance, until mayor Charles Buls intervened and architect Victor Jamaer spent two years reconstructing its gable and roof. Best heard standing where the old city wall would have run, looking up at the stone tower squeezed between newer buildings.