Social functions

Mechelen Town Hall is actually two buildings: the cloth hall with its unfinished belfry (recognized by UNESCO) and the Palace of the Great Council. In fact, Mechelen has three town halls: there is the old Schepenhuis, the building known as Den Beyaert and the present-day Town Hall.

The Town Hall on the Grote Markt has a complex history. Building work on the belfry suddenly came to a standstill in the fourteenth-century. This had to do with the decline of the cloth trade which meant there were no longer sufficient funds to complete the build. For two hundred years the belfry was no more than a shell, until it was eventually provided with a temporary roof in the sixteenth century. In fact the roof was not that temporary because it is still there! UNESCO has declared the belfry a world heritage site.

To the right of the belfry is the oldest part of the Town Hall, a vestige of the earlier cloth hall. To the left is the Keldermans wing which was only completed in the twentieth century. As the name suggests, the wing was designed by leading architect Rombout Keldermans.