3-046-934 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Balcony, Hotel de Ville, Ghent, 1872. 'The Hotel de Ville has two different fronts - one to the north in the richest flamboyant Gothic, excessively decorated; the other to the east, built more than a hundred years later, in the style of the Italian Renaissance, with three various orders of Grecian columns. This building is notable for the assembly of the Congress of the Flemish League, in 1576, to expel the Spaniards from the country - an enterprise assisted by our Queen Elizabeth, and for which Sir Philip Sidney died on the field of battle. Thousands of Protestants had been burnt at the stake, in the market-places of Ghent and other towns, of Flanders, by the atrocious cruelty of the Spanish rulers; and the Duke of Alva had seriously proposed to destroy this city entirely, because sedition and heresy were rife within its walls'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.