Travels … Brussels
Brussels, Belgium
Pensionnat Heger - The school attended by Charlotte & Emily in 1842
Pensionnat Heger - The school attended by Charlotte & Emily in 1842
Do you think of palaces and elegant city parks when you think of the Brontës? A thousand miles from the moors, this was Charlotte and Emily's home for a year...
Take a city break to walk to steps the sisters trod, see the sights where the Pensionnat Heger once stood, and see the sisters in a different light....
Pensionnat Heger - The school attended by Charlotte & Emily in 1842
Pensionnat Heger - The school attended by Charlotte & Emily in 1842
Pensionnat Heger - The school attended by Charlotte & Emily in 1842
The Pensionnat Heger was once on the site of the building on the right - now a restaurant selling pasta dishes ….
Brussels Park
Pensionnat Heger - The school attended by Charlotte & Emily in 1842
The Belliard Steps
These elegant gates mark an entrance to the Brussels Park where the sisters walked…
The Belliard Steps
The Belliard Steps
The Belliard Steps
These steps have been rebuilt since the Brontës time, but they would have climbed steep steps to reach the park and palace above…
Brussels Park
The Belliard Steps
Brussels Park
This is the Brussels Park, only a few minutes up the steps from the Pensionnat Heger.
Villette
The Belliard Steps
Brussels Park
In Charlotte’s ‘Villette’ her heroine Lucy Snow takes a walk around this park in an opioid haze…..
Place of Brussels
Place of Brussels
Place of Brussels
The palace of Brussels where the Royal family of Belgium lives was only moments away from the sisters’ school…
The Commemorative Plaque
The only hint that Charlotte and Emily were ever here….
This plaque, commemorating the sight of the school, is the only hint that the sisters were here, and difficult to find…. Even when I asked at the nearby tourist information centre they hadn’t heard of the Brontës. Look high up before the steps on the left of the restaurant….
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The Shelleyan Brontës : The Juvenilia
Think you know the Brontës? Read the most important book in Brontë scholarship! A whole new perspective on the Brontës - read what they read, understand how they wrote, meet Mary Shelley, the woman who inspired them. You know nothing about the Brontës until you have read this book…