The She-Wolf, Baroque house on Grand Place, Brussels, Belgium.
The She-Wolf is a three-story stone building on the Grand Place in Brussels, with a baroque facade decorated with fluted pilasters, ornamental carvings, and sculpted figures. Allegorical statues are placed at different levels of the facade, marking each floor of the structure.
The building dates back to 1340 and was heavily damaged during the late 17th century by two successive fires. After these destructions, architect Pierre Herbosch rebuilt it in the baroque style it shows today.
The facade features a carved stone relief showing the she-wolf nursing Romulus and Remus, a scene drawn from the founding legend of Rome. This relief gave the building its name and remains clearly visible on the Grand Place today.
The building stands at number 5 on the northwest side of the Grand Place, between two neighboring guild houses. The ground floor is occupied by a bank, so part of the interior may be accessible during opening hours.
A golden phoenix ornament crowns the top of the building, placed there as a direct reference to its repeated destruction by fire. What makes this detail striking is that the symbol applied twice, since the building burned down and was rebuilt on two separate occasions within a few years.
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