Laeken Cemetery (; ) 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.

History The oldest part of the cemetery is situated around the choir of the old Church of Our Lady of Laeken. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the cemetery was expanded several times to the south and east. A first expansion took place in 1832, when the area was doubled to over . In 1850, the death of Queen Louise-Marie, wife of King Leopold I, and her wish to be buried in Laeken, further increased the site's appeal. Additional expansions brought the cemetery's size to in 1855 and in 1886.

Description

The cemetery contains fine examples of 19th-century funerary art and also features an original bronze cast of Auguste Rodin's The 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 and his successors.

The adjacent Church of Our Lady of Laeken is the site of the Royal Crypt, the resting place of the Belgian royal family, 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 GeefsGeorge Ripley, Charles Anderson Dana, The American cyclopaedia: a popular dictionary of general knowledge, volume 10 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

See also

List of cemeteries in Belgium Anderlecht Cemetery Brussels Cemetery Ixelles Cemetery Molenbeek-Saint-Jean Cemetery Saint-Josse-ten-Noode Cemetery Schaerbeek Cemetery

References

Citations

Bibliography

External links