Laeken Cemetery

Cemetery in Laeken, Belgium

50°52′46″N 4°21′11″E / 50.87944°N 4.35306°E / 50.87944; 4.35306TypePublic, non-denominationalSize6.3 hectares (16 acres)

Laeken Cemetery (French: Cimetière de Laeken; Dutch: Begraafplaats van Laken) in Brussels, Belgium, is the city's oldest cemetery still in function and the resting place of the Belgian royal family. It is known as the Belgian Père Lachaise, after Paris' famous cemetery, because it is the burial place of the rich and the famous and for the abundance of its funerary heritage.

Description

The installation of the Belgian royal family in 1831 and the burial of Queen Louise in 1850 contributed to the appeal of Laeken.

The cemetery houses very fine examples of 19th-century funerary art and also features an original bronze cast of Auguste Rodin's Thinker, purchased in 1927 by the antiquarian and art collector Josef Dillen to use as his own memorial. Next to the entrance, there is a small museum dedicated to the sculptor Ernest Salu and his successors.

The adjacent Church of Our Lady of Laeken is the site of the Royal Crypt of Belgium, consecrated in 1872.

Notable interments

Personalities buried there include:

Alphonse Balat (1818–1895), architect
Charles Auguste de Bériot (1802–1870), violinist and composer
Jacques Coghen (1791–1858), Finance Minister and ancestor of King Philippe
Michel de Ghelderode (1898–1962), writer
Camille Jenatzy (1868–1913), race-car driver
Fernand Khnopff (1858–1921), painter
Maria Malibran (1808–1836), opera singer, with a work by sculptor Guillaume Geefs^[1]
Joseph Poelaert (1817–1879), architect
Louis-Joseph Seutin (1793–1862), surgeon
Léon Suys (1823–1887), architect
Augustus Van Dievoet (1803–1865), jurisconsult
Parthon de Von family

Graves

References

Citations

^ George Ripley, Charles Anderson Dana, The American cyclopaedia: a popular dictionary of general knowledge, volume 10

Bibliography

Celis, Marcel (2004). Cimetières et nécropoles. Bruxelles, ville d'Art et d'Histoire (in French). Vol. 38. Brussels: Éditions de la Région de Bruxelles-Capitale.