Belgium Chambre de Commerce

I’ve been to the magnificent Chamber De Commerce three times now and could never get bored from being inside, my first trip inside was when I was relatively new to exploring, this was the highlight for me to a trip to Belgium in 2012 with Danny, Keitei and Dawid, I have always been a fan of Gothic architecture and on a previous attempt during a day in November 2011 we had a failed attempt to get inside. This time we arrived late at night and got in pretty easy, if not rather ‘interesting’ and un noticed, the funny thing is that the building is absolutely massive but pretty unknown, even though it is on a very busy street in Belgium, most passer by’s would simply not know what is behind the closed wooden fence. 

 We had a great night sleep, apart from Danny B who disappeared halfway thorough the night and when we all woke, realised he hadn’t come back, admist fears he had been captured and had a multitude of evil things happened to him, he emerged and let us know a mosquito had been dive bombing his head all night and had slept in another room. Soon we were up at 6am to explore an absolutely incredible building, the most grandest gothic building I have ever stepped foot into. An array of beautiful stone arches, towering gothic grandest at its best. It’s hard to explain the grandness and scale of the building. As the sun rose and light poured into the vast windows I strolled around the large floor, footprints in the dust that had gathered through many years of abandonment. It was hard to believe that such a hidden gem, could be so unnoticed to the thousands of people on the street outside. The current building dates to 1872, it is located on a site dating to 1531 having been burnt down twice before. It was used as stock exchange but was closed many years ago. 

The second time I made a visit was with Wojtek, Michael and Emerson in 2013, Wojtek had not seen it before and top on every explorers list, he was desperate to see it and rightly so.

My final visit we arrived in the dead of night straight from the ferry, myself, Darren, Adam and Richie sat in darkness waiting for the sun to come up, sitting in the darkness the shadows danced around on the grand ceiling, I took a wander by myself