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In the 1890s, burgomaster Charles Buls spearheaded a campaign to preserve the city's ancient buildings. One of his rewards was to have a street named after him, and this runs south from the Grand-Place in between the Maison de l'Etoile and the Hotel de Ville to the corner of rue des Brasseurs (the first on the left), scene of a bizarre incident in 1873 when the French Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine shot his fellow poet and lover Arthur Rimbaud. This rash act earned him a two-year prison sentence - and all because Rimbaud had dashed from Paris to dissuade him from joining the Spanish army. Moving on, you come to rue de la Violette , the second turn on the left, and here at no. 6 the Musee de Costume et de la Dentelle (Thurs, Fri, Mon & Tues 10am-12.30pm & 1.30-5pm, Sat & Sun 2-4.30pm; ?2.50) focuses firmly on costume, showcasing temporary exhibitions of varying quality. The museum rambles over three small floors and most of the exhibitions carry multilingual labelling. The permanent collection is modest (to say the least), but is redeemed on the top floor by four wooden cupboards, which hold drawer after drawer of lace illustrating the work of all the principal centres of manufacture. Lace became an important Brussels product in the seventeenth century, and by the nineteenth century, when the industry reached its peak, the city had ten thousand lacemakers, all of them women. The lace made here was renowned for the intricacy of its designs and was in demand worldwide, bought by the rich to embellish their clothes. Nowadays lace is still made in Brussels, though on a much smaller scale - and it's still very expensive.
F. Rubbrecht on the Grand-Place - at no. 23 - has a first-rate assortment of handmade lace.
From the foot of rue de la Violette, rue de l'Etuve runs south to the Manneken Pis , a diminutive statue of a pissing urchin stuck high up in a shrine-like affair protected from the hoards of tourists by an iron fence. The Manneken is supposed to embody the "irreverent spirit" of the city, or at least that is reputed to have been the intention of Jerome Duquesnoy when he cast the original bronze statue in the 1600s to replace the medieval stone fountain that stood here before. It's likely that Duquesnoy invented the Manneken Pis, whose popularity blossomed during the sombre, priest-dominated years following the Thirty Years' War, but it's possible his bronze replaced an earlier stone version of ancient provenance. There are all sorts of folkloric tales about its origins, from lost aristocratic children recovered when they were taking a pee, to peasant lads putting out dangerous fires and - least likely of the lot - boys slashing on the city's enemies from the trees and putting them to flight. As a talisman, it has certainly attracted the attention of thieves, notably in 1817 when a French ex-convict swiped it before breaking it into pieces. The thief and the smashed Manneken were apprehended, the former publicly branded on the Grand-Place and sentenced to a life of forced labour, while the fragments of the latter were used to create the mould in which the present-day Manneken was cast. It's long been the custom for visiting VIPs to donate a costume, and the little chap is regularly kitted out in different tackle - often military or folkloric gear, from C&W stetsons and chaps to golfers' plus fours and Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse outfits.
At the Manneken Pis, your best bet is to double back to the Grand-Place before starting to explore the Lower Town.
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