Qualla: Kortrijk City Hall

Kortrijk City Hall: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Polyglot, CC BY-SA 3.0. Inside the council room of Kortrijk City Hall, a stone mantelpiece carved like lacework shows the Seven Vices on horseback. Lust rides a goat, being embraced by a man. Greed rides a toad. Envy straddles a dog with a bone in its jaws. Wrath sits on a bear, a sword across her lap. They are women, except for Sloth at the end, who is a man on a donkey. Below them, the consequences play out in tiny carved scenes - adultery boiling in a cauldron, a devil pumping bellows into the fire. The fireplace was finished in the early 16th century. It was meant to remind the magistrates what they were guarding the city against. You can stand in front of it now, in the same room, and read it like a comic strip.

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Image: Polyglot | CC BY-SA 3.0

Kortrijk City Hall: A Town Hall Burned, Rebuilt, Burned Again

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Trougnouf (Benoit Brummer), CC BY 4.0. The first town hall here was built in the 14th century and burned to the ground by the French army after the Flemish defeat at the Battle of Westrozebeke in 1382 - one of the long string of punishments inflicted on Kortrijk for siding with the wrong cousin in a French dynastic qu...

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Image: Trougnouf (Benoit Brummer) | CC BY 4.0

Kortrijk City Hall: The Counts on the Front

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter K Burian, CC BY-SA 4.0. Between 1856 and 1875 the architect Pierre Nicolas Croquison restored the front to something like its 16th-century self. The statues now ranged across the facade tell the dynastic story of medieval Flanders in stone. On the far left stands Baldwin Iron Arm, the 9th-century strong...

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Image: Peter K Burian | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kortrijk City Hall: The Aldermen's Hall and Lady Justice

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Phlegmatic assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Until 1787 the Aldermen's Hall on the ground floor was the city's tribunal - the vierschaar, where a panel of citizens passed civil and criminal judgements. The mantelpiece, completed in 1527, is a sermon in stone. On the left, Moses strikes the rock and water flows for the peopl...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Phlegmatic assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Kortrijk City Hall: The Council Room's Seven Vices

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) Pjamescowie at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 1.0. Up the stairs, past a wooden portico carved with sirens, you enter the council room with its four Gothic arches and the lacework mantelpiece. Charles V stands at its centre with his sword and his cross-bearing orb. The Seven Vices ride their animals to the left and right. Above, ...

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Image: User: (WT-shared) Pjamescowie at wts wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 1.0

Kortrijk City Hall: Cellars That Served Beer

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit EmDee, CC BY-SA 4.0. Below the hall, six old cellars run together, the largest one twenty-one metres long, dating from the early 15th century. They belonged to vanished houses with names like The Swan, The Horse-Trader's Son, The Boss, The Black Lion. For centuries the cellars were a tavern. The last...

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Image: EmDee | CC BY-SA 4.0