Ixelles  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Ixelles is one of the nineteen municipalities located in the Brussels-Capital Region of Belgium. In common with all the Brussels municipalities, it is legally bilingual.

Main sights

• The buildings of the Abbaye de la Cambre house a renowned school for the visual arts, the National Geographic Institute, and various parish functions.
• The Ixelles Ponds and Tenbosch Park are noted parks in the middle of the city.
• The Art Deco building on the Flagey square used to house the studios of the Belgian radio and television broadcasting companies (RTBF and VRT). The Résidence de la Cambre is another notable Art Deco building.
• Several Art Nouveau houses built by Victor Horta are listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, and some of them can be visited.
• Two universities—the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel—have their campuses in Ixelles. As a result, the southeast part of the municipality is home to a large number of students.
• The Ixelles Cemetery is one of the most important cemeteries in the country as it contains the graves of a number of famous Belgian personalities. It was there, in 1891, that the French General Georges Boulanger, leader of the right-wing Boulangerists, committed suicide, on the tomb of his mistress, who had died a couple of months earlier.
• Ixelles also houses several interesting churches and museums, including a fine-arts museum and the Constantin Meunier museum established in the residence where the artist lived part of his life.