Description of the attraction
Halle Gate, which is a few kilometers from Grand Place, is easier to reach by metro. You need to get off at the Porte de Hal station and walk to the historical monument of the same name, preserved from the XIV century, about a hundred meters.
The gate is named after the city of Halle in Flemish Brabant, southwest of Brussels and accessed by the road leading from the gate. The Hall Gate is the only surviving medieval fortification, part of the second city wall that encircled Brussels in the 14th century.
The gate was built in 1381. In those days, they were equipped with a descending lattice and a drawbridge, which was thrown over the moat that surrounded the city walls. Halle Gate is the only one of the eight gates of the old city that has survived to our time. When the city wall was destroyed, a military prison was made at the Halle gate. Then there were sequentially located customs, a granary and a Lutheran church.
In 1847, the gate became the property of the Royal Museum of Arms, Antiquity and Ethnology, which was later renamed the Royal Museum of Art and History. In 1868-1870, the architect Hendrik Beillard, who was engaged in the reconstruction of old buildings and their alteration for museum purposes, completely redesigned the Halle gate and turned it into a kind of neo-Gothic castle. After 1889, the entire growing museum collection could no longer fit in the building of the gate, so only weapons and armor were left here, and all the other exhibits were transported to another building.
In 1976, the Halle gate was closed due to poor condition. Since 1991, only temporary exhibitions have been located here. In 2008, the gate building was renovated and reopened to the public. The museum, which is located here, contains a collection that tells about the history of the gate, Brussels and the organization of its defense in the past centuries. Perhaps the most interesting piece of the collection is the ceremonial attire of Archduke Albrecht, Governor of the Netherlands.
