Town Hall

Oudenaarde owes its fame in historical terms largely to the town hall, one of the most beautiful examples of Brabantine late Gothic in our country. The great value of the building lies in the extremely pure proportions and in the unparalleled monumentality.
The iconic town hall of Oudenaarde is just under 500 years old. It is of a delicate beauty, a monument that conquers all hearts. It is charming and rises lively and graceful above the city. It is like a shrine in the middle of the market, surrounded by the hills of the Flemish Ardennes. Victor Hugo once wrote: "in this fantastic building there is not a single detail that is not worth looking at".
For many Oudenaarde residents, the town hall is a place of joy and sorrow, of parties, formal receptions and weddings. A place that one certainly passes by at least once in a lifetime. For visitors it is one of the most beautiful town halls in our country, a pearl of late Gothic architecture but above all it is home to the MOU Museum Oudenaarde. In the historical rooms there is always a different atmosphere, you can see the fault line between old and new, there is a surprising story. You will find the Oudenaarde tapestries in the adjacent 14th century cloth hall, under the attic roof a magnificent collection of goldsmith's work, administrative rooms such as the aldermen's hall with the historical and royal portrait gallery, the large reception hall or People's Hall with historical wall paintings, the guardians' room with 18th century archive cabinets, the weighing room or city scales, a chapel with a restoration studio and countless more rooms, each with its own identity.
(Visit Oudenaarde)

Oudenaarde Town Hall:
Oudenaarde's town hall is known as a textbook example of Brabantine late Gothic. It was erected on the site of the old aldermen's house, to which the fourteenth-century cloth hall, which still exists today, was connected.
In 1525 the old aldermen's house was in disrepair and there was a good chance that it would collapse. Out of necessity, but also longing for a new, more beautiful and more adapted building, the city council went in search of a master builder. In the end, the choice fell on Hendrik van Pede from Brussels, who built the monumental Oudenaarde town hall in ten years (1526-1536).

Build
Hendrik van Pede's original plan was not fully realized. The U-shaped construction that had been planned was replaced by an L-shaped one. The right side wall, on Nederstraat, was not completed. This facade, consisting of two storeys with a rampart built in Tournai limestone at the top, contains visible parts from the old aldermen's house. The two attached bays on the far right (a tower-like construction) with barred windows, date from 1509-1510. The barred space was the secretariat or the archive room. The ground floor most likely served as storage space, while the first floor was used by the city council.
We know that the old aldermen's house had a belfry, that the facade faced the Hoogstraat and that it was surrounded by several houses on the side of the Market. The adjoining cloth hall in bluestone has two floors. The ground floor originally served as a depot for municipal firefighting equipment and weapons, and the first floor as a display and sales area. Various materials were used in the building of the town hall: brick (skeleton), Balegem sandstone (façade), Ecaussines sand-lime brick (meshwork of the windows, columns of the arcade gallery, the cale, the kitchen and the corn house), Avesness stone (fine sculpture), wood from the Mons region, iron from Spain, and lead and gold leaf (6500 sheets) from Antwerp.

Belfry tower
On the spire of the town hall is the imperial crown and a bronze statue of the local folk hero Hanske de Krijger. According to legend, city guard Hanske was on the lookout for the arrival of Emperor Charles V. But because he fell asleep, the Emperor stood in front of closed gates. He would then have advised the people of Oudenaarde to buy glasses for their city guard. These glasses are still on the city's coat of arms today.
The Oudenaarde belfry was recognized as a world heritage site by Unesco on 1 December 1999 (as part of the group registration Belfries in Belgium and France).
During recent restoration, the sculptures on the towers have been replaced by replicas in a northern French stone, which are said to be more resistant to air pollution.
nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadhuis_van_Oudenaarde

The Gothic town hall with belfry is the eye-catcher of the market.
The oldest part, the 14th-century Cloth Hall, houses the MOU:
a museum about the history of the city, with a rich collection of tapestries and a unique collection of silversmithing.

Source: oudenaarde.be