Brussels: area by area: The Lower Town – Quartier Marolles

The centre of Brussels is enclosed within a rough pentagon of boulevards, a "petit ring" which follows the course of the fourteenth-century city walls. It is divided between the Upper and Lower Towns, the neighbourhoods generally becoming more expensive the higher you go.
By far the greater part of the centre is occupied by the Lower Town, the medieval core of which zeroes in on the Grand Place, the unquestionable centre of Brussels and perhaps the finest preserved city square in Europe.
South of here, the busy centre fades into the old working-class streets of the Marolles district and Gare du Midi, now a depressed, predominantly immigrant area; north, the shopping street of rue Neuve leads up to place Rogier and the tawdry area around the Gare du Nord.