[5][6][7] The Town Hall (French: Hôtel de Ville, Dutch: Stadhuis) of the City of Brussels was erected in stages, between 1401 and 1455, on the south side of the Grand-Place/Grote Markt, transforming the square into the seat of municipal power.

As a result, a second, somewhat longer wing was built on to the existing structure, with the young Duke Charles the Bold laying its first stone in 1444.

Historians think that it could be Guillaume (Willem) de Voghel who was the architect of the City of Brussels in 1452, and who was also, at that time, the designer of the Aula Magna at the Palace of Coudenberg.

[9] The 96-metre-high (315 ft) tower in Brabantine Gothic style is the work of Jan van Ruysbroek, the court architect of Philip the Good.

The resulting fire completely gutted the Town Hall, destroying the building's archives and art collections, including paintings by Rogier van der Weyden.

[17] After the bombardment, the municipal government funded the Town Hall's repair, raising the money by selling houses and land.

The interior was soon rebuilt and enlarged by the architect-sculptor Cornelis van Nerven [fr], who added three rear wings in the Louis XIV style over the ruins of the former inner cloth market (Halle au Drap), from 1706 to 1717,[9] transforming the L-shaped building into its present configuration: a quadrilateral with an inner courtyard.

Between 1844 and 1902, nearly three hundred statues in Caen and Échaillon stone [fr], created by famous artists, including Charles Geefs, Charles-Auguste Fraikin, Eugène Simonis and George Minne, were executed.

[19] The interior rooms were replenished with tapestries, paintings, and sculptures, largely representing subjects of importance in local and regional history, such as a monumental bronze statue of Saint Michael created by Charles van der Stappen in the entrance.

It has three levels pierced with elegant openwork ogival bays and adorned with a profusion of arcades, parapets and gargoyles, and ends with a remarkable openwork spire enhanced with gilding and surmounted by the statue of Saint Michael, the patron saint of the City of Brussels, slaying a dragon or demon.

[26] The dragon symbolises the Devil or Satan according to the Apocalypse: The main façade consists of two asymmetrical wings framing the tower and terminated by corner turrets.

The façade is decorated with numerous statues representing the local nobility (such as the Dukes and Duchesses of Brabant and knights of the Noble Houses of Brussels), saints, and allegorical figures.

On either side of this portal stand statues of the four cardinal virtues: Prudentia ("Prudence") and Justitia ("Justice") on the left, Fortitudo ("Fortitude") and Temperantia ("Temperance") on the right.

These ogival arcades have an outer curve decorated with cabbage leaves, a typical motif of the Brabantine Gothic style.

The gallery in the left wing houses a porch made up of a staircase, a stone balustrade pierced with quadrilobed motifs and two columns each surmounted by a seated lion bearing the coat of arms of Brussels.

[29] On either side of the steps, the pillars are replaced by historiated corbels representing two tragic scenes involving schepen (aldermen) of the City of Brussels: The various façades of the Gothic Town Hall (on the Grand-Place but also on the courtyard side) are adorned with innumerable very expressive gargoyles depicting human beings, animals or fantastic creatures.

[30][18] The north-western and south-eastern façades of the courtyard have two levels pierced by large rectangular windows with wooden mullions with a flat frame and drip edge in the shape of an entablature, all surmounted by a high roof pierced with dormer windows surmounted by a triangular pediment (a structure very similar to the façade on the Rue de l'Amigo/Vruntstraat).

The three paintings between the windows show female figures against a golden background, representing the cities of Antwerp, Brussels and Leuven.

The walls are covered with four tapestries from the eight-part series Life of Clovis, after cartons by the French painter Charles Poerson.

The Waiting Room, originally built for the secretariat of the States of Brabant, is decorated with paintings by Jean-Baptiste Van Moer [fr].

The staircase of honour is the result of a late 19th-century renovation to provide direct and monumental access to the mayor's cabinet and the Gothic Room.

A Middle Dutch poem has been reproduced on the roof beams, which, as early as the 15th century, recalled the way to properly govern the city.

The Austrian architect Friedrich von Schmidt drew inspiration from it when building the City Hall in Vienna.