Mechelen Attractions

Industry includes furniture and canning factories, a railroad workshop as well as many factories founded within the framework of the European Community by the countries of the Community.

The products of lace, carpet and woolen concerns enjoy an excellent reputation. In addition Mechelen is a center of market gardening (asparagus, peas etc.).

There was a settlement on the right bank of the Dijle as early as the sixth C. B.C. In the eighth C. an Irishman named Rombout brought Christianity to Mechelen, which in the Middle Ages was called Machlina (Latin Mechlinia). In 915 it belonged to the bishopric of Liège and from 1213, thanks to its favorable situation from the point of view of communications, it gained almost complete independence. Bishop Adolf van der Marck sold it in 1332 to the dukes of Flanders.

From 1369 it belonged to Burgundy and in 1473 it became the seat of the Great Council, the highest court in the Netherlands. After the death of Charles the Bold his widow Margarete of York chose Mechelen as her residence. From 1507 to 1530 Mechelen was ruled as Stadholder by Margarete of Austria, the aunt of Charles V. The town blossomed as a residence and many scientists and artists, such as Eramus of Rotterdam and Albrecht Dürer, came to stay for a time.

After Margarete's successor Maria of Hungary moved her seat in 1546 to Brussels, Mechelen was compensated by the gift of the archbishopric with primacy over the whole of the Netherlands. The first archbishop was Antoine Perrenot de Granville, the confessor of Charles V and Philipp II. At this time lace, carpets and particularly gilded leather tapestry were especially prized. The War of Independence in the Netherlands brought destruction, yet the town flourished again in the Baroque era. In 1835 the first railroad on the European continent ran from Mechelen to Brussels. Damage done in the First and Second World Wars has long been made good.