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Normally July & Aug Tues-Sat 11am-5pm, Sun 10am-5pm; Sept-June Tues-Fri 10am-5pm, Wed, plus occasional Sat and Sun morning, but currently closed by fire damage; free. Metro: Ste Catherine . Just north of place Ste Catherine, place du Samedi and then rue du Cypres squeeze through to place du Beguinage , a good-looking piazza dominated by St Jean Baptiste au Beguinage , a supple, billowing structure dating from the second half of the seventeenth century. This beautiful church is the only building left from the Beguine convent founded here in the thirteenth century. The convent once crowded in on the church, and only since its demolition - and the creation of the star-shaped place du Beguinage in 1855 - has it been possible to view the exterior with any degree of ease. There's a sense of movement in each and every feature, a dynamism of design culminating in three soaring gables where the upper portion of the central tower is decorated with pinnacles that echo those of the Hotel de Ville. The church's light and spacious interior is lavishly decorated, the white stone columns and arches dripping with solemn-faced cherubs intent on reminding the congregation of their mortality. The nave and aisles are wide and open, offering unobstructed views of the high altar, but you can't fail to notice the enormous wooden pulpit featuring St Dominic preaching against heresy - and trampling a heretic under foot for good measure. Around the back of the church, a short street takes you through to a slender, tree-lined square framed by the austere Neoclassicism of the Hospice Pacheco (no access), built to house the destitute in the 1820s. It's a peaceful spot today, but the stern wall that surrounds the complex is a reminder of times when the hospice was more like a prison than a shelter, and draconian rules were imposed with brutal severity. The Senne River once flowed beside the hospice, but is no longer viewable here. By the nineteenth century it had become intolerably polluted - to quote the Brussels writer Camille Lemonnier, "the dumping ground, not only of industry, but also of the houses lining the river: it was not unusual to see the ballooned stomach of a dog mixed pell mell with its own litter?" After an outbreak of cholera in 1866, which killed over 3500 city folk, the river was piped underground and paved over.
From the Hospice Pacheco, it's a five- to ten-minute walk east to the place des Martyrs to the north of the Grand-Place.
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