Namur Gate

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Namur Gate (Naamsepoort) was one of the seven original gates of Brussels' second city wall, an eight-kilometre rampart begun in 1357, after the city was taken by Louis de Male, Count of Flanders, in 1356, and completed around 1400. It followed the model of the Hal Gate: a large D-shaped tower pierced by a central vaulted passage, extended outwards by a fortified passage closed off by an outer gate between two turrets. It opened the south-eastern side of the city onto the Chaussée de Wavre and the Chaussée d'Ixelles, medieval roads leading to the Maelbeek valley, the Abbey of La Cambre, the Forest of Soignes and Namur. Reinforced with ravelins in the sixteenth century and then with a bastion in the seventeenth century, whose name is perpetuated by the Square du Bastion, it was demolished after the dismantling of the ramparts ordered by Joseph II, beginning at the end of the eighteenth century. Two neoclassical toll pavilions, designed as part of the plan of the City Architect, Auguste Payen, replaced it; they were moved to the entrance of the Bois de la Cambre. Nothing of the gate survives, though its name now designates a crossroads and a district.