Rug buying in Brussels centre

The building stock

38% of the housing stock of the City of Brussels predates 1919, against 17% built after 1962 (2022 data). The centre is therefore a fabric of narrow, tall tenement houses, with rooms in enfilade and straight-flight wooden staircases: a 300 × 400 rug does not go up the stairwell, it goes up rolled and upright.

It is in that building stock that the rugs we buy lie sleeping: interwar attics, reception rooms, landing cupboards.

Damp and water

The vaulting over of the Senne began in February 1867 and the central boulevards (Anspach, Lemonnier, Adolphe Max, Émile Jacqmain) were opened to traffic between 1871 and 1873, after the expropriation of some 1,100 houses. Before that, the whole western half of the Pentagon — the "lower town" — flooded periodically. The river still runs underfoot: the cellars of the lower town remain the dampest in the centre.

A rug left in a damp cellar is not a worthless rug. Do not throw it away before showing it to us: we also buy as it is.

The rug market

The centre concentrates the second-hand rug trade in Brussels. The Vieux Marché on the place du Jeu de Balle, in the Marolles, is held 7 days a week from 6.00 to 14.00, on that square since 1873 (it came from the place Anneessens). 600 metres away, the Grand Sablon antiques market brings together some forty dealers on Saturday from 9.00 to 17.00 and on Sunday until 15.00, and the rue Haute / rue Blaes corridor lines up the multi-dealer galleries (Haute Antiques, about 25 exhibitors; Via Antica, more than 30), open from around 10.30.

That is the circuit through which a rug changes hands here. We are the direct alternative to it: no waiting, no commission, payment the same day.