Place du Grand Sablon
Sloping square built on a former horse market and pond, now ringed by antique galleries and a mid-eighteenth-century fountain.
This guide to Place du Grand Sablon in Brussels opens with the legend of Beatrijs Soetkens, a woman said to have stolen a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary from Antwerp before dawn on the Virgin's own instruction, and carried it to a sandy marsh outside the city walls. It follows the statue into the hands of the Guild of Crossbowmen, an armed brotherhood who used the muddy square as their shooting range, and the annual procession that grew up around it into one of the city's grandest festivals. For centuries afterward the square stayed a working horse market beside a stagnant pond, before nobility moved in and drained it.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.