Place Royale Bruxelles – Statue de Godefroy de Bouillon

Place Royale Bruxelles – Statue de Godefroy de Bouillon

When the Place Royale was created, a statue of Charles of Lorraine was erected there . It was overturned in 1794 and melted down to be converted into currency. The square remained devoid of any statue for several decades. It is unclear when the idea of ​​erecting a statue of Godefroid de Bouillon took shape there . She was in tune with the times, at a time when young Belgium was looking for patriotic landmarks.

When the House debated the project in 1842 , things did not go smoothly, with some parliamentarians being reluctant that the budget allocated for the project would be exceeded. Eugène Simonis had designed a project which was examined by a committee of the Chamber. In 1843, the contract fell to him: a bronze sculpture of twelve tons, executed in two parts, and which would measure five meters high without the standard. It was not until 1846 that a royal decree definitively fixed the location of the statue in the Place Royale.

The realization of the work was almost compromised. As there was no foundry in Belgium capable of carrying out a job of this magnitude, the work was entrusted to a Parisian foundryman, then, after his bankruptcy, to a second. When the French Revolution of 1848 broke out, the “royal” statue incurred the wrath of some rioters, who wanted to destroy it. To dissuade them, they were told that it was the “statue of a republican general who delivered the tomb of Christ from the hands of tyrants”. The statue was unveiled on August 15 , 1848(on the base, we read the 24). The inscriptions were added in 1880. As for the bas-reliefs by Guillaume De Groot, commissioned in 1874, they were not placed until 1897, almost fifty years after the inauguration.