Woluwe-Saint-Pierre/Sint-Pieters-Woluwe

   The commune of Woluwe-Saint-Pierre developed in the valley of the Woluwe stream, a tributary of the Senne River. The name appears for the first time in a charter of the abbey of Forest dated 1164 in which the bishop of Cambrai made a gift of the church of Saint-Pierre to the Benedictines in Forest. The rural settlement grew very slowly. Large agricultural holdings were owned and managed by the abbey of Park, near Leuven. The commune was progressively urbanized in the 20th century, most especially following creation of the avenue de Ter-vuren (1897). Growing from about 1,000 residents in the 19th century, the community today counts approximately 40,000. Many of those who live here work in the institutions of the European Union.

   The chateau Manoir d'Anjou (rue au Bois 365) was built by 19th-century industrialist A. C. Madoux, who transformed an earlier structure (château de Putdael) built in 1858 by a Brussels printer and lithographer into a neoclassical showplace. In 1913 the Madoux family put the premises at the disposal of the princes of Orleans, royalist claimants to the French throne, who lived here, except during the world wars when it was requisitioned by the Germans, until 1948 when it was purchased by the Good Shepherd (Bon Pasteur) nuns. It is now used by the religious order as a center for the care of children and families in distress.

   In 1906, a track for horse races was built in Stockel. An airfield inaugurated at the World's Fair of 1910 drew large crowds before World War I for aerial shows, and it was here that the first woman parachutist Madame Cayat de Castella was killed in 1914. The airfield was used until 1957. Since 1975, a sports center occupies the site of the racetrack.

   The Woluwe Park was laid out in 1899 by French landscape architect Élie Lainé, and the Hôtel de Ville was built in 1961 by architects G. Vermeiren and P. Nicaise.

   The collection of antique books assembled by industrialist Michel Wittock is housed in the Bibliotheca Wittockiana, which dates from 1983. The Palais Stocklet residence (avenue de Tervuren 281), built by Austrian architect Josef Hoffman (1870-1956) between 1906 and 1911, stands, in its linear starkness, as a striking counterexample to the lavishness of art nouveau.