Pictures :
Eric de Ville, L. Polfliet, SRAB

3D plan of the Cathedral :
Régie des Bâtiments

Based upon an original idea
of Graphic Design

The city of Brussels grew out of a settlement of craftsmen and merchants which was founded in the late 10th century - or the early 11th century at the latest - in the valley on the banks of the Senne, a small river which disappeared from the urban landscape in the 19th century and is now even diverted from the vaulted canals in the city centre. The burgeoning town continued to grow steadily over the centuries, until the 15th century when it experienced years of exceptional expansion. (SEE ILLUSTRATION )

It is still easy to make out the historical city from a modern map of Brussels: it is enclosed within
the pentagon formed by the boulevards of the inner ring road, as the line of this pentagon follows
the second-built circle of the city walls. The city did not extend beyond these walls, constructed between the 14th and 15th centuries, until the turn of the 19th century.

While the origins of Brussels are to be found in the valley close to the famous Grand Place, another site 500 meters further away had held a similarly important role for some time. It was located atop the steep slope of the valley (at an altitude of 62m compared with 18m) on the spot where the modern-day cathedral now stands. Collegiate until 1962, the cathedral had held this status for some nine hundred years, that is, since just before 1050. To provide some idea of the time-scale involved, this is before the capture of Jerusalem in the first crusade (1099) and even earlier than the Norman conquest (1066).

Recent excavations have uncovered the remains of walls attributable to the original collegiate church,
to which we believe the crypt belonged. Beneath some of them (under the nave and transept only) archaeologists found bones from earlier tombs: these were dated using carbon-14 (C14) at between
the late 8th century and the late 9th century (the oldest) and between the second half of the 10th and
the early 11th centuries (the most recent). (SEE ILLUSTRATION )

The remains are evidence of what must have been - given the period of their origin - a rural population. In one way or another, contacts must have been established fairly quickly with the small neighbouring group of craftsmen and merchants who had settled near the banks of the Senne. Unfortunately,
it is impossible to be more precise since there are no written texts - even the least direct, clear or detailed - dating from this time. Furthermore, during this era the tombs would have been located near
to a church, even though the conditions of the land have prevented archaeologists from finding direct evidence to this effect. It must have been a small rural construction which, apparently, was already dedicated to Saint Michael at this early stage.

GLOSSARY

The archaeological excavations that resulted in the discovery of the Romanesque crypt are the result of team work by the excavation group of the "Société Royale d'Archéologie de Bruxelles" (Royal Archaeological Society of Brussels) (Pierre-P. Bonenfant, Michel Fourny and Madeleine Le Bon) carried out with the support of the Building Authority of the Federal State of Belgium (architect Hugo Claes), working with the Seco Checking Office (K. Van Eyken).

The financing was also crucial. The donation by a private patron, the Société Générale de Belgique and the contribution from the City of Brussels played an essential part.

The presentation of this crypt was owed to the general public both in Belgium and abroad. It does not however represent the final point of scientific research in this field.

On the contrary, research is going to be able to extend in new directions:
the place of the crypt and the collegiate church in Romanesque architecture, pictorial evidences, graffiti, a language to see and to decode.

In the coming years, these will result in the provision of additional understanding and further precision in chronological conclusions.

A site to revisit...