Anderlecht was still a country village when world-famous humanist Erasmus came to ‘play at farming’ in 1521. The lovely brick home where he stayed for five months is now an appealing something-of-everything museum tucked behind the nearby 16th-century Gothic Church of St-Pierre and St-Guidon. The museum is an unexpected little gem furnished with fine artworks including several Flemish Primitive paintings and containing some priceless manuscripts.
There’s an attractive ‘philosophy garden’ behind the museum, and the modest entry fee also allows access to Belgium’s smallest begijnhof .
The church has some original murals and was once a major pilgrimage site: right up until WWI, cart drivers and those suffering fits would arrive here to pray before the reliquary of 10th-century St-Guy (Guidon), the multitasked patron saint of cattle, workhorses, sheds and epileptics. The church’s white-stone spire dominates the patchily attractive, café -ringed square Place de la Vaillance, where several 1920s buildings have pseudo-medieval facades.
