"The town where I was born! (yeah, yeah,... " a Nivelles Travel Page by XenoHumph

What a shame! The first time I looked for Nivelles on VT, nothing! With all these talented Belgian VT members, what's going on that none seems to know this nice little town, where the famous Xenohumph saw the light of the day for the first time??
Well, so, I had to do something, even if my pictures are not top quality and I visited the town as a tourist only once, in 2001 to show it to my husband. For 25 years, every year, I went to Nivelles to visit my grand-mother and stay at her place, a small typical white-painted brick house. So, I am not very versed on all the historical stuffs to see here, beside the biggest church in town, Collégiale Sainte-Gertrude (above) dating from the Middle-Ages. It is one of the biggest romanesque churches in Europe.

Nivelles was bombed by the Germans in 1940. Luckily the walls of the Collégiale withstood the blast, and all that needed to be rebuilt were the roof and the main steeple. Houses around the church were completely flattened.
This is a picture that was in my Grand-Mother's living room throughout my childhood. The picture was taken by the local photographer Monsieur Sanspoux (funny name by the way in french, it means without flees!). Sorry, the scanning of the picture through its glass frame did not give a wonderful result...

Nivelles is located about 25 km South of Brussels, in the Brabant -Wallon province of Belgium. The inhabitants of Nivelles are called aclots (male) and aclotes (female) and they speak french.

The house on the picture was built by my mother in the 50'. I lived there the first year of my life. My parents sold the house more than 10 years ago. I think the street is Rue Dangonneau.