Cemetery of Laeken

The cemetery of the old commune of Laeken to Brussels, is oldest of the cemeteries of Brussels still in function. It is also most known internationally for the richness of the funerary inheritance which it contains.

It is also the last cemetery of the area of Brussels of the “parochial” type, established around a church according to the old Christian habit to bury deaths near the alive ones. The other cemeteries of this category were replaced by communal cemeteries installed at the times of their foundations apart from the residential areas.

The Notre-Dame church

The origins of the old Gothic church Notre-Dame de Laeken go back to the 13th century. Various legends of appearances, of miraculous cures are attached there. To the 17th century, the archduchess Isabelle dedicates large a devotion with a statuette of the virgin preserved in the church which becomes a pastoral walk and place of pilgrimage for the inhabitants of Brussels. The illustrations of time show the surmounted church of a square central tower, prolonged on a side of a vault dedicated to Holy-Bores and already surrounded by a small cemetery.

From 1781, the last governors of the Austrian Netherlands, Marie-Christine of Austria and Albert of Saxony-Teschen makes build in the vicinity the castle of Schoonenberg to be used to them as residence of summer. Which will become later property of Napoleon I {{er}}, then of William of Orange which will increase it before becoming the residence of the kings of the Belgians, known under the name of Château of Laeken. This choice will strongly increase the notoriety of the village and its cemetery become, as of the 18th century, the cemetery of the aristocracy and the middle-class.

In 1850, the first queen of the Belgians, Louise-Marie, girl of the king of France Louis-Philippe, is buried in the vault. Four years later the first stone of a new monumental church of neo-gothic style is posed whose plans are entrusted to Joseph Poelaert. Although devoted in 1872, it will be completed only in 1909. It contains the funerary crypt where the family members are buried royal.

The old church, closed down and strongly dilapidated, will be the subject of a partial restoration, then finally of a demolition in 1894; only the chorus is preserved in the middle of the cemetery, closed by a new frontage.

The cemetery

The installation of the royalty with Laeken in 1831 and, more still, the burial of the queen in 1850, increase the attraction of the locality and its cemetery; on these occasions, its surface will be increased respectively to 1,23 ha, then to 2,46 ha.

In spite of these extensions, the increase in population causes the saturation of the cemetery about the middle of the Années 1870. The engineer and alderman Emile Bockstael, future burgomaster of the commune, imagine an important network, length of several hundred meters, underground funerary galleries which follow the layout of the alleys of surface. Various monuments give access of them: one of them, whose construction in 1879 was supervised by Bockstael, will be transformed forty years later, to shelter its tomb. In 1930, a columbarium Art déco, conceived by the architect François Malfait, will serve as new entry with the galleries. Today, the major part of the network is made inaccessible by fear of collapse, on standby of its consolidation, and certain alleys of surface have being barred. A last extension will be still carried out after the Second world war to install a military square of honors there.

At the beginning of the 20th century, one takes the practice to compare the cemetery with the Père Lachaise Parisian. All those whose name had, since the independence of Belgium, asset some notoriety made a point of being buried in Laeken and of being characterized by a monument which would not make them confuse with the commun run of the people. One finds, engraved in the stone, a profusion of titles, high military ranks or civil functions, burgomasters, ministers or advisers.

The statuary is the work of the sculptors more for the time. One notices there a specimen of the Penseur of Rodin. Many whining bronze or stone young people, vêtues of veils, extend in sometimes suggestive installations, on surmounted tombs of the busts notable representatives austere and bearded ones whose death is supposed being the cause of their despair.

Many monuments were carried out in the workshop of the sculptor and stone talllor Ernest Salu (1845-1923), locate just beside the entry of the cemetery and become today museum of funerary art.

Personalities

Among the buried personalities with Laeken:

Some burgomasters of Brussels like Nicolas-Jean Rouppe (1769-1838) or Andre-Napoleon Fontainas (1807-1863), or of Laeken like Charles-Joseph Herry (1805-1879) or Emile Bockstael (1838-1920).
Of the architects, such as Alphonse Balat (1818-1895), Leon Suys (Stock Exchange Brussels), Jan Bases (1848-1914, Flemish royal Théâtre of Brussels) or Joseph Poelaert, whose monument is a recall in reduction of the gate of the Law courts of Brussels that it conceived.
Of the artists, among whom the professional singer María-Felicità García known as Malibran (1808-1836), died in scene, wife of the violonist Charles-Auguste de Bériot (1802-1870), buried both in a vault built by the architect Tilman-François Suys; the pianist virtuoso Marie Pleyel (1811-1875), daughter-in-law of the type-setter Ignace Joseph Pleyel; the painters Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921), François-Joseph Navez, (1787-1869), Jean-François Portaels (1818-1895); the writer Michel de Ghelderode (1898-1962).
the engineer Camille Jenatzy (1868-1913), first pilot to have exceeded 100 km/h in car.

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