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South of Notre Dame de la Chapelle, rue Blaes together with the less appealing rue Haute form the double spine of the Quartier Marolles , stacked on the slopes below the Palais de Justice. An earthy neighbourhood of run-down housing and cheap, basic restaurants, shops and bars, it's one of the few places in the city where you can still hear older people using the traditional dialect, Brusselse Sproek or Marollien. A brand of Flemish which has, over the centuries, been influenced by the languages of the city's overlords, it is now in danger of dying out, and local people have set up an academy to preserve it. They propose - to add to the capital's linguistic complexities - that all newcomers to Brussels should learn one hundred words of the dialect. It's a colourful, ribald language; you could make a start with dikenek , "big mouth"; schieve lavabo , "idiot" (literally "a twisted toilet"); or fieu , "son of a bitch". The Marolles neighbourhood grew up in the seventeenth century as a centre for artisans working on the nearby mansions of Sablon. Industrialized in the eighteenth century, it remained a thriving working-class district until the 1870s, when the paving-over of the Senne led to the riverside factories closing down and moving out to the suburbs. The workers and their families followed, abandoning Marolles to the old and poor. Today, gentrification is creeping into the district - along rue Blaes dilapidated houses are in the process of being restored, and the occasional restaurant or antique shop has sprouted up among the bars and secondhand clothes shops. Place du Jeu de Balle , the heart of Marolles, is relatively unchanged, a shabby square surrounded by rough-edged bars that is the scene of the city's best flea market. The market is a daily event (7am-2pm), but it's at its most hectic on Sunday mornings, when the square and the surrounding streets are completely taken over by pile after pile of rusty junk alongside muddles of eccentric bric-a-brac - everything from a chipped buddha, a rococo angel or African idol, to horn-rimmed glasses, a top hat or a stuffed bear.
If you've ventured as far south as the place du Jeu de Balle, then the Gare du Midi area is within easy walking distance - another ten minutes or so to the west. You're also within comfortable striking distance of the Porte de Hal and St Gilles. In addition, boulevard Lemonnier runs straight from the Bourse to the Gare du Midi, but it's a dreary thoroughfare of no particular interest.
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