A three-bay town house with a carriage entrance, built in 1834 in one of the oldest streets inside the first walls of Brussels. Since 1989–1990 it has been a hotel, today La Légende. The Brussels region entered it on its legal heritage inventory in August 2024.
At a glance
Number 35 is what the Brussels heritage inventory calls an hôtel particulier, a private town house with its own carriage door, stables and outbuildings. The building permit that dates it, 1834, is kept in the archives of the City of Brussels. The house originally stood as one of a pair with a similar but plainer neighbour, which was demolished around 1911. Behind the street front a large rear wing and a coach house run back behind the next house, number 33. The whole was renovated and turned into a hotel in 1989–1990. We have not found the name of the architect or of the family who built it.
Key facts
- Where: Rue du Lombard 35, 1000 Brussels (Pentagon, Quartier du Centre)
- Built: 1834, according to the building permit (City of Brussels archives, AVB/TP 14278)
- Architect: not known; the inventory records him as unknown
- Type and style: town house with outbuildings, neoclassical
- Protection: entered on the legal inventory of the architectural heritage of the Brussels-Capital Region on 19 August 2024 (inventory notice 31290)
- Later changes: the twin house next door demolished around 1911; renovation and conversion into a hotel in 1989–1990
- Current use: Hotel La Légende
- Coordinates: 50.845728, 4.350227 · open in Google Maps
History
The rue du Lombard was laid out inside the first city wall of Brussels, built between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. In the Middle Ages it was called Volrestraete, from the fullers who worked near the river Senne. Its present name comes from the Mont-de-Piété, the public pawn bank founded in 1618 in the former town house of the lords of Beersel on the south side of the street; the bank was closed under French rule in 1795, reopened in 1810 and demolished when the rue du Midi was cut through in 1861–1862. Between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries the street held several markets, for dairy produce, hides and leather, grain and wool.
Number 35 was built in 1834, four years after Belgian independence, as a house of three storeys and three bays. The inventory notes that it was paired with a similar house of only two bays, more soberly treated, and that this neighbour was pulled down around 1911. In 1908 the rue du Lombard had been widened considerably on both sides of the rue du Midi; the inventory does not say whether the demolition was connected with that work, and we have not found a record that does.
The house kept its carriage entrance and its outbuildings: a large rear wing and a coach house that extend behind number 33, originally two storeys high. In 1989–1990 the building was renovated and fitted out as a hotel. The hotel describes itself as installed in a former hôtel de maître, a gentleman’s town house, in the centre of Brussels. On 19 August 2024 the house was entered on the legal inventory of the Brussels-Capital Region, the register that gives buildings of heritage interest a first level of legal recognition.
What you see
We have not found a free photograph of the front that we could publish, so this description follows the regional heritage inventory. The street front is rendered and painted over a base of Belgian bluestone, and the projecting window sills continue across it as moulded bands. The entrance bay, on the right, is wider than the others and stands slightly forward: it holds the carriage door and, on the main floor above, a rectangular window framed under a drip moulding. The other windows are rectangular; those on the ground floor once had shutters, and those on the upper floors now have later, simpler frames. The front ends in a broad entablature: a moulded band, a frieze pierced with small square putlog holes, and a cornice carried on modillions with a row of dentils.
Inside, the inventory records a hall articulated by flat pilasters on either side of a round-headed arch, a glazed door under an entablature carried on columns, and a semicircular staircase whose metal balusters are fixed to the outside of the curved stringer. The rear wing and the coach house open through carriage doors and round-headed windows under drip mouldings, set between flat pilaster strips.
Practical information
- The building is a hotel, La Légende; the interiors and the rear wing are for guests.
- The street front can be seen at any time from the rue du Lombard. The cornice with its modillions and dentils is best seen from the opposite pavement.
- The inventory entry is a recognition of heritage interest, not a full protection as a listed monument.
Getting there
The house stands in the old centre, a few steps from the rue de l’Étuve and the Manneken Pis; the Grand-Place is a few minutes’ walk to the north-east. The nearest public transport is the Bourse – Grand-Place underground tram station, about 300 metres to the north-west, and Brussels-Central railway station is about 500 metres to the east.
Nearby
- The Manneken Pis, at the corner of the rue de l’Étuve and the rue du Chêne, less than 100 metres away.
- The Grand-Place, about 200 metres to the north-east.
- Le Dixseptième, three old houses behind one Baroque front on the rue de la Madeleine, about 350 metres to the east.
- Maison Frison, the Victor Horta house on the rue Lebeau, about 400 metres to the south-east.
Do you know more?
On this page we have published what the regional inventory records about this house. We have no photograph of its front we are free to publish, and we could not find the name of its architect or of the family who built it in 1834, nor what became of the house between the demolition of its twin around 1911 and its conversion into a hotel in 1989. If you know something — a name, a date, the families who lived here, an old photograph, a document, a book that mentions it — or if you can send us a photograph of the front, write to Sofia, who looks after these pages.
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Please start your message with the title of this page, so it reaches the right file. Every contribution is checked against independent sources before it goes on the page, and we always say where a piece of information came from.
Sources
- Brussels-Capital Region, Inventaire du patrimoine architectural, notice «Rue du Lombard 35» (Urban 31290): date 1834 from the building permit (AVB/TP 14278), architect unknown, neoclassical town house with outbuildings, the demolished twin, the description of the front, hall, staircase and rear wing, the hotel conversion of 1989–1990, and the entry on the legal inventory of 19 August 2024.
- Brussels-Capital Region, Inventaire du patrimoine architectural, street notice «Rue du Lombard»: the street inside the first wall, the name Volrestraete, the Mont-de-Piété of 1618, the markets, and the widening of 1908.
- Hotel La Légende, official website: the hotel’s own description of the building as a former town house.
- OpenStreetMap / Nominatim: position, returned as 35, Rue du Lombard, Quartier du Centre, Pentagone, Bruxelles.
- No source independent of the inventory has been found for the history of the house between 1834 and 1989.
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