Catalogue information
The Church of Our Lady of the Chapel (in Dutch: Kapellekerk) is one of the monuments of Brussels with the oldest historical roots. The presence of a chapel at this place is attested by a charter dated 1134 and signed by the hand of Duke Godefroid the Bearded. With this document, he donates a chapel he had built, located "extra oppidum Bruxellae" (outside the fortifications of Brussels), to the Benedictine monks of the Abbey of the Holy Sepulcher of Cambrai who founded there a priory. The privileges of the monks will be increased in 1195 by Henry I of Brabant who designates the chapel as: “Capella Beatae Mariae extra muros oppidi Bruxellensis sita” 1. These references outside the walls are among the elements which have led certain historians2 to consider the construction of the first wall of Brussels as prior to the generally accepted period of the early thirteenth century.
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