Ixelles / Elsene, Brussels

The Musée communal des Beaux-Art (Gemeendemuseum voor Schone Kunsten) in the Rue Jean van Volsem off the east side of the Chaussée possesses an excellent collection of Belgian and French paintings and of Belgian Impressionist paintings in particular.

In 1200, in what was then a small valley between the Etangs d'Ixelles (the little lakes now situated at the end of the Chaussée d'Ixelles) and the Bois de la Cambre which today forms an oasis of tranquility amidst the city traffic, Cistercian nuns founded an abbey. It was destroyed in the 16th C. but then rebuilt. Now, set in lovely French gardens, it houses the National Geographical Institute and an art college. The former abbey church (14th C.) is a slender, elegant building with Baroque vaulting. Inside can be seen a painting by Albert Bouts ("The Mocking of Christ") and the shrine of St Boniface, a 13th C. Bishop of Brussels. The windows of the cloister are decorated with the arms of over 40 abbesses and nuns.

The Bois de la Cambre in the very south of Ixelles is one of the favorite recreation areas close to Greater Brussels. The 24 ha/59 acre park has a lake, restaurants and broad expanses of grass for games or merely for resting. The wide and splendid Avenue Louise (Louizalaan) links the park directly with the city center.

Located at the east edge of the Bois de la Cambre are administrative buildings and lecture halls belonging to the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Free University of Brussels), the larger and more modern part of which occupies a site a little further east still, in Etterbeek.

Charles de Coster lies buried in the cemetery on Ixelles' boundary with Etterbeek. A figure of Till Eulenspiegel decorates his grave.