Het Coudenbergpaleis

This guide to Het Coudenbergpaleis in Brussels turns on the night of 3 February 1731, when fire broke out in the private apartments of Archduchess Maria-Elisabeth and court protocol nearly cost her her life before a guard broke the rule to pull her out. It follows the palace's five centuries as home to dukes, emperors, and governors, the cover story officials told about a boiled-over pot of jam, and Empress Maria Theresa's decision decades later to flatten the ruins under a new square. Listen for what archaeologists found waiting underground when they finally went looking again in the 1980s.