Hi, I am an historian, archivist and occasionnal tour guide from Brussels. This webiste is just a place to hoard all my knowledge about my amazingly wet city. Come dredge up some teasures from its swampy depths with me.
It's accepted among historians that Brussels' name comes from Bruocsella, with Bruoc meaning swamp and sella something like house. Bruxelles is quite litterally a city build on a swamp, something that's quite impossible to tell when you are walking its nicely cobbled streets. However, the swamp is still under us, and like the covered up Senne river rushing under boulevard Anspaak, it's constantly fighting to take its old place back.