Local pickPhoto by Marvin Radke on Unsplash
Place du Châtelain
Wednesday market square at the top of the walk, ringed by sgraffito facades.
You're standing on the rise of Place du Châtelain. If it's a Wednesday afternoon, the square is full of stalls: vegetables, cheese, fruit, and people filling bags. Under the paving and the cobbles, the ground here is the eastern slope of the shallow valley the Maelbeek cut through Ixelles.
This walk follows that water. You'll cross the ridge at avenue Louise, then go down the stream's valley through the ponds it fed, and finish at the spring it comes from, in the abbey garden.
Before that, look up at the houses. In the streets radiating from this square, the same decades left sgraffito panels, iron balconies and stone carved into whiplash curves. Sgraffito is a Belgian speciality: layers of coloured plaster scraped back while still soft, so the design appears as the top layer is cut away. You'll find fable animals and allegories, and one facade carrying a private message under its cornice. The district was filling in street by street when these were made.
