Marollen

This guide to the Marolles in Brussels traces the insult still spoken on these streets — skieven architekt, crooked architect — back to Joseph Poelaert, the man King Leopold the First hired in the 1860s to build a colossal Palace of Justice on top of this poor, crowded neighborhood. It follows the demolitions that came next, the families displaced, and the twist that Poelaert himself lived just streets from the wreckage. He died in 1879, four years before the palace opened, without seeing it finished. Listen among the market stalls where the story is still told.