Page 215 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Europe

FR ANCE AND THE L OW C OUNTRIES  213

BELGIUM AND

LUXEMBOURG

Famed for its magnificent Flemish art and Gothic architecture, Belgium, like
neighboring Luxembourg, is a melting pot of various influences, including
Dutch, French, and German. The histories of the two countries have long been
interlinked, but culturally and linguistically they are distinct. Luxembourg, a
major financial center, is one of the smallest states in Europe.

In recent times, both Belgium and History
Luxembourg have largely avoided the At the start of the 12th century, commerce
limelight, but it was here, in the Middle became the guiding force in Europe, and
Ages, that the first great towns of Northern the centers of trade quickly grew into
Europe were born, and where the first powerful cities. Rivers and canals were keys
experiments with oil paintings were to the growth of the area’s towns; Brussels,
made. Today, Brussels, as the center of Ghent, Ypres, Antwerp, and Bruges became
government for the European Union, is the focus of a cloth trade between Belgium,
theoretically the capital of Europe, but its France, Germany, Italy, and England.
reputation remains overshadowed by In 1369 Philip, Duke of Burgundy,
those of the larger European capitals. married the daughter of the Count of
Perhaps more than any other country in Flanders, and a few years later the Low
Europe, Belgium is most aptly defined by Countries and eastern France came under
contrasts. The division between the Flemish the couple’s Burgundian rule. A century
inhabitants of the north and the French- later, the death of Mary of Burgundy left
speaking Walloons in the south is mirrored her husband, the Habsburg Emperor
by a geographical divide; the estuarial Maximilian, ruler of Belgium. In 1488,
plains of Brabant and Flanders give way to Brussels and the rest of Flanders rebelled
the rolling hill-country of the Ardennes, against this new power, but the Austrians
which stretches south and east through prevailed, largely because of a plague
the castle-dotted woods of Luxembourg. which decimated the population in 1490.

European Parliament building rising above the trees of Parc Léopold, Brussels
One of the majestic gilt-edged buildings surrounding the Grand Place, Brussels

212-215_EW_Europe.indd 213 14/07/16 10:44 am