Cloth Hall Tournai

The beautiful building of the cloth hall or Grand'Garde in Renaissance style, built in 1610 , is one of the gems of the Grote Markt.

And yet this hall, whose functions have changed over time, was almost destroyed at the end of the 19th century to make way for a courthouse. ​​Then the firebombs of May 1940 stripped the hall of artefacts and of the history it contained. In 1940 , only the four facades of the main building remained, as well as the ground floor of the courtyard. The hall was restored and rebuilt after the war.

It is to the Bishop of Tournai Gautier de Marvis that we owe the first construction of a market hall on the Grand Place. In 1227, the congregation was sentenced to a heavy fine , having violated the right of asylum of the cathedral chapter by removing a criminal from the monastery who was subsequently executed. Unable to pay, she had to sell several buildings and convert a house called 'al Treille', located in the main square, into a market.

Originally, the market was used for selling edibles and all kinds of manufactured products.

With the development of the curtain industry, especially in Italy and Flanders, the hall became specialized. In the 14th century, cloth production in Tournai included 2,500 crafts that employed a large number of workers, not to mention all the supporting industries such as combers, spinners, dyers, fullers, carders, shearers, etc.

Little is known about its history before 1606 . The maximum we can specify is that it is made of wood . On this date a storm toppled it. Four years later it was rebuilt by incorporating two adjacent houses, the “Lyon d'Or” and the “Thoison d'or”.

The authors, Jacques Van den Steen and Quentin Ratte, were probably inspired by the Renaissance facade of Ghent's town hall . The style chosen is of a composite type: some pointed arches on the ground floor are still reminiscent of the Gothic style, the arch of the central door in the shape of a basket, the first floor with its small projecting gallery that we call bretèche are Renaissance.

In 1616, Gérard Spelbaut from Ghent, inspired by Italy, built a large courtyard behind the front building with galleries with one floor of apartments, the galleries housing the stalls of cloth merchants.

The entire building collapsed in 1881 , but was faithfully rebuilt in 1888. The square courtyard is bordered by a gallery on Tuscan columns and covered by a large glass roof that expands the exhibition space of the painting museum that will subsequently be installed there.

To the left of the cloth hall is the Conciergerie (1612). The facade, which had disappeared for a long time, was rebuilt between the two wars.

Over the centuries, the building has had various other purposes. It housed a music school and a drawing academy before becoming a Protestant temple, a painting museum, a theater and a concert hall.

Various festive events are currently taking place in the Lakenhal.

Willem Vandenameele