Le Dixseptième, Brussels

Cream rendered town house front of three storeys on the Rue de la Madeleine, Brussels, with two dormers, two round-arched doorways and black awnings — Rue de la Madeleine 23–27, seen from the street: the six-bay screen front, with the two gabled bays on the right half hidden by a tree. Photo: *Ensemble de trois maisons traditionnelles Rue De La Madeleine 23 27* by Mélioratif via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Brussels · Pentagon, between the Grand-Place and the Mont des Arts · baroque town houses, late 17th–early 18th century

Le Dixseptième, Brussels — Three Old Houses Behind One Baroque Front on the Rue de la Madeleine

Three houses joined behind a single rendered facade at the turn of the eighteenth century, with a Louis XVI oak staircase inside number 25. The group has been a protected monument since 2008 and today houses the hotel Le Dixseptième.

At a glance

Numbers 23, 25 and 27 on the Rue de la Madeleine look like one building, and that is the point: the Brussels regional inventory of architectural heritage describes them as three houses united behind a facade that works as a screen. It dates the front to the end of the seventeenth century or the beginning of the eighteenth, with later changes, and calls its style classicising baroque. The whole group has been legally protected (classé) since 12 June 2008.

The street runs from the Grand-Place quarter towards Brussels-Central station and the Mont des Arts, and this stretch of it keeps several houses of the same age. The small Chapelle de la Madeleine stands a few steps away. The hotel Le Dixseptième, which takes its name from the seventeenth century, occupies the houses today.

Key facts

Where: Rue de la Madeleine 23, 25 and 27, 1000 Brussels (Pentagon), Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium
Date: late 17th or early 18th century, according to the regional inventory; dormers of the second half of the 18th century; ground floor altered in 1857–1858 and later
Architect: not known
Type: three houses joined behind a single screen facade
Style: classicising baroque front; Louis XVI staircase and salon inside no. 25
Protection: listed monument (classé) since 12 June 2008; Brussels heritage register reference 2043-0788/0
Inventory record: Inventaire du patrimoine architectural, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale, notice 31310
Current use: hotel Le Dixseptième, entrance at no. 25
Coordinates: 50.845578, 4.354785 · open in Google Maps

History

The inventory reads the front as three separate houses brought together behind one composed elevation around 1700. The six left-hand bays share a hipped roof and a regular order of windows; the two right-hand bays sit under their own pitched roof, set at right angles to the street and covered in S-shaped tiles. Nobody is named as the builder, and the inventory gives no owner for these early years.

The house has been changed at each stage of its life, and the inventory records the layers. In the second half of the eighteenth century two dormers with curved hoods and fluted brackets were set on the roof, probably replacing an earlier crowning. Inside number 25, in the rear wing, a new entrance hall and staircase were built in the last quarter of the same century. In 1857–1858 the ground floor was rebuilt: until then, according to the city building permits held in the Brussels City Archives, it had panelled pilasters and an arched door and carriage entrance in the first and fourth bays.

At the back, the three left-hand bays kept a rendered gable pierced by iron wall anchors until 1965. On 12 June 2008 the Brussels-Capital Region protected the group as a monument; the neighbouring house at number 21 was protected on the same day. The hotel that now occupies the houses says that its main building goes back to the seventeenth century and that it has grown over the years into additional buildings around a patio and a garden wing.

What you see

From the street the building reads as a single pale cream front of three storeys, rendered and painted, with tall rectangular windows that grow slightly shorter towards the top. Flat pilasters, picked out only faintly in the same cream paint, run up through the upper floors, and a moulded cornice closes the front under a tiled roof. Two dormers with white curved hoods rise from the roof, one towards each end of the six-bay block. The windows of the first and second floors have low wrought-iron guards.

At street level two round-arched doorways, one at the far left and one in the fourth bay, break the ground floor; the second is the hotel entrance, with potted shrubs beside it. Between and beside them the windows carry black awnings with the hotel’s monogram. On the right the facade continues into the two bays under their own gable, which in the photograph are largely hidden by the branches of a street tree. A grey stone plinth runs along the base.

Inside, the inventory describes a very fine oak staircase of honour in Louis XVI style in number 25, with a fluted newel topped by a vase and a rail resting alternately on balusters and openwork panels, under a ceiling with a woman’s face at the centre of a radiating sun. It also records a panelled salon with pilasters under arabesque capitals, overdoors decorated with putti and a marble chimneypiece, and, in the second inner courtyard, a blind wall with arched niches and medallions carrying portraits of the same period.

Practical information

The houses are a working hotel, Le Dixseptième; the facade can be seen from the street at any time.
The interiors described above are part of the hotel and are not a public visit.
Ten minutes covers the facade and its protected neighbours on the same street.

Getting there

Brussels-Central station is about 150 metres to the east, so the building is a two-minute walk from the trains and from the metro station beneath it. The Grand-Place is about 200 metres to the west on foot.

Nearby

The Chapelle de la Madeleine, about 30 metres away on the same street: a chapel whose origins the inventory traces back to at least 1210, protected since 1942.
The Galerie Bortier and the former Madeleine market, at Rue de la Madeleine 55, about 100 metres south.
Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert, Brussels, about 200 metres north.
King’s House, Brussels, on the Grand-Place, about 200 metres west.

Sources

Inventaire du patrimoine architectural, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale — Rue de la Madeleine 23, 25, 27: dating, description of the front, roofs and dormers, 1857–1858 ground floor (Brussels City Archives, TP 15462–15464), rear gable until 1965, interiors of no. 25, protection since 12 June 2008.
Inventaire du patrimoine architectural — Rue de la Madeleine 21: protected on the same day, 12 June 2008.
Inventaire du patrimoine architectural — Chapelle de la Madeleine: protected since 28 December 1942.
Wikidata, item Q42418537 (Ensemble de trois maisons traditionnelles), Brussels heritage register reference 2043-0788/0.
Hotel Le Dixseptième — Our story: the hotel’s own account of its main building and later extensions; address.
OpenStreetMap / Nominatim — position of Rue de la Madeleine 25.

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