Convent Van Maerlant

About

The Convent Van Maerlant (French: Couvent Van Maerlant; Dutch: Van Maerlantklooster) is a former convent which consists of a church and the Chapel of the Resurrection on the Rue Van Maerlant/Van Maerlantstraat in Brussels, Belgium. It is named after Jacob van Maerlant, a famous medieval Flemish poet. The original chapel was built in 1435 in the authority of a papal bull, and was renovated in the 1780s. The convent of the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration itself was converted from a ducal town house in the early 1850s. In 1905, a compulsory purchase order for land for Brussels-Central railway station was made on the Rue des Sols/Stuiversstraat, and this included the convent. As a result, a virtually identical chapel was built, which survived for another 45 years, only to finally be demolished in 1955. Falling vocations meant the convent was closed in the early 1980s, and after standing derelict for nearly 20 years, it was acquired to become the central library of the European Commission.

First church: The Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, who became the Sisters of the Eucharist in 1969, were a chief Eucharistic Order founded by Anna de Meeûs, the eldest daughter of the...