Every other year, Brussels decorates the Grand Place with a vast carpet of cut flowers. This year’s pattern was designed to celebrate 50 years of Turkish immigration to Brussels, and was made of begonias laid out in the pattern of a traditional Turkish carpet.
(Click on the picture to make it larger.)
The carpet was 75m by 25m, apparently 1800 square metres of begonias. The flowers are there all through the weekend of the 15 August, which is a bank holiday here in Belgium. This year, they were laid out overnight on the 14th, and were there until the Sunday night. The weather wasn’t fabulous, but that probably helped the flowers keep their colour for a little longer – and the amount of work that must have gone into them is astonishing.
The town hall opens its balconies to visitors for the occasion and for the small sum of €5, you can wander through the ornate building (well worth seeing in its own right) and see the flower carpet from on high. Well worth the money, I reckon. Plus you get a giant guidebook, that I haven’t yet read.
Here are some photos I took of the 2014 flower carpet and the town hall on the Grand Place:
ExpatinBrussels 