Stadhuis

Balancing the massive bulk of St-Romboutskathedraal across Mechelen's splendid Grote Markt is the contrastingly poetic stadhuis in all its devil-may-care stone flamboyance. Its architectural inventiveness stems from the fact that it's really three different buildings knocked together: a never-finished medieval belfry flanked by a 14th-century cloth hall and a 1911 neo-Gothic council hall built to a long-shelved 16th-century design.