Mechelen is one of Flanders' best-kept secrets: a small city with first-rate monuments but without the crowds of Bruges or the bustle of Antwerp. Halfway between Brussels and Antwerp, it played a huge role in the 16th century as the capital of the Netherlands under Margaret of Austria. It is still the primatial see of the Catholic Church in Belgium, and that illustrious past left a colossal cathedral, stately squares and dreamy beguinages.
Its great symbol is the tower of St Rumbold's Cathedral, an unfinished Gothic giant you can climb for one of the best views in Flanders. The city also prides itself on being the world capital of the carillon, with an international school devoted to this art of the bells. Mechelen is also home to the legend of the 'moon extinguishers', locals who one night thought their tower was on fire when it was only the reflection of the moon.
Mechelen also holds an essential, sober place of remembrance: the Kazerne Dossin, the barracks from which the Nazis deported tens of thousands of Jews and Roma to Auschwitz. This guide covers the city's essentials with a practical and respectful eye: the cathedral and its tower, the Grote Markt, the great UNESCO World Heritage beguinage, the Holocaust memorial and its museums. A serene Flemish gem, perfect for a quiet getaway.
Mechelen grew up on the banks of the River Dijle and became very important in the Middle Ages thanks to trade (cloth, fish) and its strategic position. Its high point came in the early 16th century, when Margaret of Austria, aunt and guardian of the future Emperor Charles V, set up her court here. She governed the Habsburg Netherlands from Mechelen, making it the political capital and a brilliant centre of the Northern Renaissance. Shortly afterwards, in 1559, Mechelen became the seat of the primatial archdiocese of the Netherlands, an ecclesiastical rank it still holds. After the court moved to Brussels and the wars of religion took their toll, the city lost political weight but kept its religious and artistic prestige. It developed traditions such as bell-founding, tapestry and furniture making, and above all the art of the carillon, which made it famous around the world. In the 20th century its name became tied to a tragic chapter: the Dossin barracks were the transit camp from which Nazi Germany deported more than 25,000 Jews and Roma to the extermination camps. Today Mechelen is a prosperous, peaceful Flemish city that has carefully restored its rich heritage. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The great historic cities of Flanders —Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and Mechelen— were, in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, among the richest in Europe, the cradle of the Flemish Primitives, of great trade and of the art of Van Eyck and Rubens.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The origins of Mechelen go back to the Early Middle Ages, to a settlement on the banks of the river Dijle (Dyle), in an area of low, damp land in the centre of what is now Flanders. Tradition links the founding of the local Christian community to St Rumbold, a missionary said by legend to be of Irish or English origin, who is thought to have evangelised the region in the eighth century and died a martyr in the area. He became the city's patron saint, the great cathedral would be dedicated to him centuries later, and his name has been tied to Mechelen ever since.
The place name 'Mechelen' (Malines) probably derives from a term for a raised spot or a settlement in the surrounding marshy landscape. Through the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the town grew as a centre of trade and craftwork, helped by its position beside the navigable river and on the inland routes of the Low Countries. Trade in cloth, fish and salt, and a budding craft industry, laid the foundations of its prosperity.
Mechelen had a legal peculiarity that shaped its history: for much of the Middle Ages it was an ecclesiastical lordship and then a special enclave, not fully part of either the duchy of Brabant or the county of Flanders, which gave it a degree of autonomy. That unusual status, added to its central location, prepared it for the leading role it would play in the following centuries, when it passed into the hands of the great noble houses that dominated the Low Countries.
Mechelen's moment of greatest splendour came at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and it bears a woman's name: Margaret of Austria. Daughter of Emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg and aunt of the future emperor Charles V, Margaret was appointed governor (regent) of the Habsburg Low Countries and guardian of the young Charles, and she established her court in Mechelen. Between roughly 1507 and 1530, the city became the political capital of the Low Countries and one of the most brilliant centres of the Northern Renaissance.
Margaret, a cultured woman, a skilful politician and a great patron, made her Mechelen court a hub of art, music, humanism and refinement. She commissioned the building of her palace, the Hof van Savoye (one of the first Renaissance buildings north of the Alps), assembled a notable art collection and a library, and protected artists, musicians and humanists. Figures who would shape European history were educated at that court, among them Charles V himself and other members of the imperial family. In those years Mechelen was the political and cultural heart of an empire in the making.
The city prospered as a centre of the arts: it was famous for its production of tapestries, furniture, sculpture and altarpieces, and for its court life. What is more, in 1559 Mechelen was raised to the seat of the primatial archbishopric of the Low Countries, the highest church rank, which strengthened its prestige (a rank it keeps to this day: the archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels is the primate of Belgium). That golden age left the city a heritage of exceptional quality. But after Margaret's death and the move of the court to Brussels, Mechelen would begin to lose its central political role.
The sixteenth century, which had raised Mechelen up, also brought it misfortune. With the move of the Habsburg court to Brussels, the city lost its role as political capital and a slow decline set in. To that were added the ravages of the wars of religion and of the revolt of the Low Countries against the Spanish crown of Philip II, which laid waste to the region in the second half of the century.
Mechelen, because of its central position, suffered particularly. In 1572, during the revolt, the city was taken and brutally sacked by the Spanish troops of the Duke of Alba, in a devastating episode known locally as the 'Spanish Fury' of Mechelen. A few years later, in 1580, it suffered a new sacking, this time at the hands of Protestant troops (the so-called 'English Fury'). These repeated episodes of violence, plunder and destruction hit the city's population and economy hard.
Like the rest of the Southern Netherlands, Mechelen finally remained under Catholic and Spanish rule, while the north gained independence as the Republic of the United Provinces. Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, under Spanish and then Austrian rule, the city kept its religious prestige (as an archiepiscopal see) and certain craft and artistic activities, but it never regained the political and economic weight of its golden age. It did, though, specialise in trades that would bring it lasting fame: bell founding, the making of furniture and tapestries, and, very particularly, the art of the carillon, which would make Mechelen the world capital of bell music.
The darkest chapter in Mechelen's history came in the Second World War, and it has to be told precisely and soberly. After the occupation of Belgium by Nazi Germany in 1940, the regime set in motion the systematic extermination of the Jewish and Roma population. To organise the deportations from Belgium and northern France, the Nazis chose Mechelen as the site of a transit or concentration camp (Sammellager): the Dossin barracks (Kazerne Dossin), a former military barracks in the centre of the city.
The choice of Mechelen was coldly logistical: the city lay halfway between the country's two largest Jewish communities, those of Antwerp and Brussels, and on the railway line running east, towards the extermination camps in occupied Poland. Between the summer of 1942 and the summer of 1944, more than 25,000 Jews and several hundred Roma were held at the Dossin barracks and deported in some twenty rail convoys to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. The great majority were murdered; only a small minority survived to the end of the war. It was the heart of the Shoah in Belgium.
Today the site is a memorial and a museum, Kazerne Dossin, opened in 2012, devoted to the memory of the victims and to reflection on the Holocaust, human rights and the mechanisms of persecution and genocide. One of its most striking images is a wall covered with individual photographs of the deportees, a reminder that behind every figure there was a person, a family, a life. The visit, sober and rigorous, makes Mechelen a central place in the historical memory of Belgium and of Europe.
After the wounds of the twentieth century, Mechelen has enjoyed a remarkable revival in recent decades. The city, which had been somewhat forgotten in the shadow of its big neighbours Brussels and Antwerp, undertook an ambitious policy of restoring its heritage and revitalising its old town, which has earned it recognition as one of the best-kept urban centres in Flanders. Its medieval and Baroque façades, its squares and its great cathedral have recovered the splendour of its golden age, and the city has built a reputation as a quiet, pleasant destination with a high quality of life.
One of its contemporary hallmarks is its status as world capital of the carillon, the art of playing music on the bells of a tower. In 1922 the Royal Carillon School 'Jef Denyn' was founded in Mechelen (named after the master carillonneur who revolutionised the instrument), the oldest and most prestigious in the world, drawing students from every continent. The city's towers, starting with the unmistakable unfinished tower of St Rumbold's, still give bell concerts that are part of the sonic soul of Mechelen.
The city also keeps its traditions and legends, such as that of the 'Maneblussers' (the 'moon extinguishers'): according to the story, one night in 1687 some drunken locals thought St Rumbold's tower was on fire and organised a human chain to put out the 'blaze', which was nothing more than the reddish reflection of the moon through the mist; ever since, the people of Mechelen have carried the nickname, half mocking, half proud, of 'moon extinguishers'. Between its rich heritage, its historical memory, its bell music and its quiet life, today's Mechelen is one of the most rewarding and authentic getaways in Flanders, a great historic city on a human scale.
