Laeken Cemetery

The cemetery grew out of a medieval churchyard. As the population of Laeken rose from 1,806 in 1831 to almost 18,000 in 1880, it had to be extended several times. Queen Louise-Marie was buried here in 1850, after which the grounds grew again. The nave of the old church was largely demolished in 1904, and only the choir remains among the graves.

With space exhausted by the mid-1870s, the alderman Émile Bockstael had underground burial galleries built. The first, 31 metres long, entered service in 1878. The galleries cover more than one and a half hectares with about 300 metres of passages, and over 4,000 people are buried there. They have been listed since 1997.

Above ground, several monuments stand out: the domed tomb of Maria Malibran (1808 to 1836), the grave chapel of Léonce Evrard, where a heart of sunlight forms at the summer solstice, and the grave of the antiques dealer Jef Dillen, topped by a bronze cast of Rodin's The Thinker. The architects Alphonse Balat and Joseph Poelaert, the painter Fernand Khnopff and the writer Michel de Ghelderode are also buried here. The former workshop of the sculptor Ernest Salu by the entrance houses a small museum of funerary art.