Église Notre-Dame de Laeken

This guide to Eglise Notre-Dame de Laeken in Brussels follows Charlotte, a Belgian princess who became empress of Mexico at twenty-four beside her husband, Archduke Maximilian, in the 1860s. It traces the empire's swift collapse, her desperate journey to Rome to plead for his throne, and the decades she then spent locked away nearby, convinced she was still being hunted. You'll also hear why King Leopold I built this church in the first place, as a monument to grief.