The Brussels Flower Carpet

Oriental carpets, wall-to-wall plush pile, even that favorite tacky remnant of the 1970s, shag. These are all types of carpets with which you are doubtless familiar. But a carpet made of flowers? Well, this is yet another of the quirky things about Belgium...quirky, but beautiful.

As evidenced from our many flower-related blog posts, all things floral are big here in Belgium. Added to that, this is also home of the world-renowned Flemish weaving trade, resulting in history's most beautiful and valuable tapestries. So apparently in the early 1950s someone decided to combine the two, using flowers to create a large "carpet" or tapestry. The idea caught on, and in 1971 Brussels hosted its first flower carpet in the beautiful Grand Place. Now this event happens every two years and incorporates a mind-boggling ±540,000 begonias (300 flowers per square meter, "woven" over the Grand Place's 1800 square meter "floor") in a unique, themed-design. Past themes have included 'Brussels Coats of Arms & Guilds', 'Art Nouveau', and 'Brussels Lace'. This year's theme was the sort-of-boring-but-appropriately-long-titled "Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union'. Now, what could that look like? You'll see shortly.

Since the event only happens one weekend every-other-year, you have to get your timing right to attend. We were out of town in 2008, but somewhat unexpectedly found ourselves in Brussels this year, so we seized the opportunity to check out the spectacle!



A nice, sunny shot of us at one end of the flower carpet. These next several photos are taken at ground level, going in a kind of circle.

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This is the amazing Gothic Maison de Ville/Stadhuis (Town Hall). Normally closed off to the average visitor, they open up its balconies to the public to view the flower carpet from above.



That's the also-intricately-Gothically-amazing Musée de la Ville/Museum van de Stad (City Museum of Brussels) that among other things houses the crazy collection of Manneken Pis Costumes. You could view the carpet from its balconies too.



This end of the Grand Place has a gorgeous assembly of recently-restored guild houses. Once they get all four sides of the Grand Place restored, it really will be the prettiest square in the world.



Time to go up! As you can see, this is a popular thing and there was quite the queue, but it was totally worth it. Plus, the time spent in line was interesting because the town hall is such a cool building. Unfortunately, they wouldn't allow photographs on the interior.



There were flowers everywhere, like these at the entrance.



Now, we're on the balcony looking up at the building wall behind us. This is a detail shot, but the ENTIRE exterior is covered in intricately carved statuary.





Ok, now for the flowers. Panning from the left...



Middle...



And right.



An artistic macro shot.



The carpet really was beautiful, unique, intricate, and fascinating. And yet, I must confess that I found the theme to be a bit, well, lame. And not a little bit ironic. Rah rah EU when Belgium, yet again, doesn't have a functioning government? Plus, to me the fountain area looked like it said "EW" (tee hee). But, really, who cares? Belgian politics is a confounding tangled mess that confuses minds far more astute than mine. And we were discussing flowers -- it's a carpet made of Half a Million flowers, and that's cool.



Can't get enough? Here's a video Troy took of the whole display: