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From place St Gery, it's a couple of minutes' stroll north to rue Antoine Dansaert , where the most innovative and stylish of the city's fashion designers have set up shop amongst the dilapidated old houses that stretch up towards place du Nouveau Marche aux Grains. Amongst several outstanding boutiques on this street, three of the best are Nicole Cadine, at no. 28, Oliver Strelli, at no. 46, and Via Della Spiga, at no. 44, which sells everything from locally designed gear to Westwood, McQueen and Paul Smith. Stijl, at no. 74, showcases a bevy of big-name designers too, and there's strikingly original furniture at Max, whose two shops face each other across the street at nos. 90 and 103. Turning right off rue Antoine Dansaert, place du Nouveau Marche aux Grains leads straight into place Ste Catherine , which is, despite its dishevelled appearance, at the heart of one of the city's most fashionable districts, not least because of its excellent seafood restaurants. Presiding over the square is the church of Ste Catherine , a battered nineteenth-century replacement for the Baroque original, of which the creamy, curvy belfry is the solitary survivor. Venture inside the church and you'll spy - behind the glass screen that closes off most of the nave - a fourteenth-century Black Madonna and Child, a sensually carved stone statuette that was chucked into the Senne by Protestants, but landed rather fortuitously on a clod of peat and was fished out.
Ste Catherine is open daily 8.30am-5.30pm; free.
Quai aux Briques and the parallel quai aux Bois a Bruler extend northwest from place Ste Catherine on either side of a wide and open area that was - until it was filled in - the most central part of the city's main dock . Strolling along this open area, you'll pass a motley assortment of nineteenth-century warehouses, shops and bars which maintain an appealing canalside feel - an impression heightened in the early morning when the streets are choked with lorries bearing trays of fish for local restaurants. At the end of the old quays, the fanciful water fountain , with its lizards and dolphins, honours Burgomaster Anspach, a driving force in the move to modernize the city during the 1880s.
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