Cemetery sheets

View of the Liebfrauenkirche from the Laken cemetery

The cemetery of Laeken / Laken (French: Cimetère de Laeken , Dutch: Begraafplaats van Laken ) is located in a sub-municipality of the city of Brussels in the north-west of the Brussels-Capital Region . It borders on the Church of Our Lady (Laeken) in whose crypt the members of the Belgian royal family are traditionally buried. It is located a few hundred meters from Laeken Castle , the official residence of the Belgian king. The cemetery is considered a Belgian celebrity cemetery due to the funerary art and the buried Belgian celebrities. It is particularly notable for the underground tomb galleries laid out by the mayor of Laken, Émile Bockstael .

Trivia

Auguste Rodin's “Thinker” in the cemetery

Underground burial galleries before restoration

One of the original bronze casts by Auguste Rodin's The Thinker is in the cemetery . At the beginning of his career, Rodin lived in Brussels for some time, where he worked on sculptures for the Brussels Stock Exchange (built in 1873), among other things.
The former studio of the Brussels sculptor family Salu is located next to the cemetery and now functions as a museum for funerary art .
Robert Menasse describes in the novel The Capital - although not historically correct - the grave of Louise Flognot, designed by her husband the sculptor Léonce Evrard . Every June 21st, the sun paints a heart on the wall of the mausoleum.

Personalities buried in the cemetery

Marie Popelin , Belgian suffragette and first lawyer in Belgium
Fernand Khnopff , Belgian painter
Joseph Poelaert , Belgian architect, responsible for the Palace of Justice , among others .
Maria Malibran , French opera singer
Michel de Ghelderode , writer
Joseph Cardijn , cardinal and founder of the Christian working-class youth (in fact he was buried in the Church of Our Lady)

Web links

Commons : Cimetière de Laeken - Collection of images, videos and audio files

swell

↑ Laeken cemetery. In: Laeken, Brussels. Retrieved June 24, 2020 (American English).
↑ Eric Min: De eeuw van Brussel: biography van een stad, 1850-1914 . De Bezige Bij, Antwerp 2013, ISBN 978-90-8542-394-2 (Dutch).
^ Museum - Collectie - Archief. Epitaaf vzw, accessed June 24, 2020 (Dutch).
^ Robert Menasse: The capital . 1st edition. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-518-42758-3 .

50.879444444444 4.3530555555556Coordinates: 50 ° 52 ′ 46 ″ N , 4 ° 21 ′ 11 ″ E

[1] Laeken cemetery. In: Laeken, Brussels. Retrieved June 24, 2020 (American English).

[2] Eric Min: De eeuw van Brussel: biography van een stad, 1850-1914 . De Bezige Bij, Antwerp 2013, ISBN 978-90-8542-394-2 (Dutch).

[3] Museum - Collectie - Archief. Epitaaf vzw, accessed June 24, 2020 (Dutch).

[4] Robert Menasse: The capital . 1st edition. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-518-42758-3 .