1. Brussels...by Jakub Vaňo, 1.D

2. Brussels as a city  Statistics  History  Linguistic situation

3. Statistics Brusel, the capital of Belgium Correctly name is „The city of Brussels“, which is one of 19 municipalities in Brussels Has 1 140 00 inhabitants Brusel is the seat of European Commission, Council of the Europe Union and NATO

4. History In 977 AD, the German emperor Otto II gave the duchy of Lower Lotharingia, the empire's western frontier to Charles, the banished son of King Louis IV of France. Mention was already made of Brussels at the time. However, the founding of Brussels is usually known to happen when a small castle was built by Charles around 979 on an island (called Saint-Gery island) encompassed by the Zenne or Senne river. At the end of the tenth century, the county of Brussels was taken over by Lambert I of Leuven. Under Lambert II of Leuven, a new castrum and the first city walls were built.

5. History The small town became in the 12th century an important stop on the commercial road from Brugge to Cologne. The Counts of Leuven became Dukes of Brabant at about this time also (1183/1184). From 1357 to 1379, a new city enclosure was constructed as the former one was already proving to be too small: it is now known as the inner ring or pentagon. In the 15th century, by means of the wedding of heiress Margaret III of Flanders with Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, a new Duke of Brabant emerged from the House of Valois (namely Antoine, their son), with another line of descent from the Habsburgs (Maximilian of Austria, later Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, was Philip's father). In 1695 Brussels was attacked by general Villeroy of King Louis XIV of France. A bombardment destroyed the city's heart: more than 4000 houses were put to flame, including the medieval buildings at the Grote Markt or Grand Place, except for the famous city hall, which miraculously survived.

6. History In 1830, the Belgian revolution took place in Brussels after a presentation of Auber's opera La Muette de Portici at De Munt or La Monnaie theatre. On July 21, 1831, Léopold I, the first King of the Belgians, ascended the throne, undertaking the destruction of the city walls and the construction of many buildings. Under Léopold II, the city underwent many more changes: the Zenne was culverted (as it brought diseases), the North-South Junction was built, and the Tervuren Avenue was laid out. From May 10, 1940, Brussels was bombed by the German army. Most of the damage was done however in 1944-1945. The Heysel Stadium disaster took place in Brussels on May 29, 1985. The Brussels Capital Region was founded on June 18, 1989. In 1996 Brussels gained an interesting importance for Somalian community in Belgium. The spiritual leader of Muslim Somalians in Europe, namely Al Siddik al Har'am, died in a car accident in Brussels. The plot became a spiritual site for mourners. Now every year Somalians gather there on 7th of August and commemorate the accident.

7. Linguistic situation Nowadays, the Brussels Capital Region is officially bilingual French- Dutch. 8,5% of the Brussels population are native Dutch- speakers and 20% have both Dutch and French as a mother tongue. The same research shows that almost half of the population are native French-speakers. In reality, Brussels has become a multilingual city, rather than a bilingual one.

8. Places of interest  Atomium  MiniEurope  Grand-place  Janneke and Manneken Pis  Royal museum for central Africa

9. Atomium Built for the 1958 Brussels World‚s Fair (Expo '58), the 103-meter (335- foot) tall Atomium monument represents a unit cell of an iron crystal (body-centered cubic), magnified 165 billion times, with vertical body diagonal, with tubes along the 12 edges of the cube and from all 8 vertices to the center. Nine steel spheres 18 meters in diameter connect via tubes with escalators as long as 35 m, among the longest in Europe. Windows in the top sphere provide a panoramic view of Brussels. Other spheres have 1950s exhibitions. Three upper spheres lacking vertical support are not open to the public for safety reasons..

10. MiniEurope It is a part of Heysel in Brussels, Belgium that contains replicas of famous buildings from countries in the European Union. There is object as Big Ben in London, Eifel tower in Paris or Berlin wall.

11. Grand-place The Grand Place is the central market square of Brussels. It is surrounded by guild houses, the city's spectacular town hall and the Breadhouse. The market square is the most important tourist destination in Brussels.

12. Janneke and Manneken Pis Jeanneke Pis is a modern fountain and statue in Brussels, which forms a counterpoint in gender terms to the city's trademark Manneken Pis, as it does aurally and geographically, being about the same distance away on the other side of the Grand'Place. Manneken Pis ("little man piss" in English), is a Brussels landmark. It is a small bronze fountain sculpture depicting a little boy urinating into the fountain's basin. Similar statues can be found in the towns of Geraardsbergen and Hasselt.

13. RMCA The Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) is an ethnographical and natural history museum in Tervuren in the suburbs of Brussels, Belgium. It focuses mainly on Congo, Belgium's former colony. The sphere of influence however (especially regarding to biological research) extends to the whole Congo River basin, Middle Africa, East Africa and West Africa, but tries to integrate Africa as a whole. First purely intended as a colonial museum, after 1960 it became more focused on ethnography and anthropology. Like in most museums, there is a research department and a public exhibit department. Not all research is pertaining to Africa, for example the research on the archaeozoology of Sagalassos. Some researchers have strong ties with the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences.

14. Resources  www.wikipedia.org  www.google.com