[2] The Dutch term Ommegang (originally spelled Ommeganck) means "moving around" or "walking around" (e.g. the church, village or city) and is an old historical evocation of Brussels' largest lustral procession, which took place once a year, on the Sunday before Pentecost.

[1][3] The term thus evoked the act of "circumambulation" around a religious symbol (i.e. the Virgin Mary's statue), in Latin circumambulatio or amburbium,[4] which can be found in many religions and beliefs.

From the mid-16th century, the Ommegang not only celebrated the miraculous legend, but from 1549, became intertwined with the Joyous Entry of Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and his son, Philip II, then-crown prince of the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands.

The event was described at that time in the diary of a bourgeois of Brussels, Jan de Potter, who, over the years, mentions that it was sad, ugly or worse, that it did not take place.

In the 17th century, the Ommegang regained its lustre, under the reigns of the Archdukes Albert VII and Isabella, sovereigns of the Spanish Netherlands, as depicted in a series of paintings by the court painters Denis van Alsloot and Antoon Sallaert, representing the celebrations of 1615.

The organisers chose not to revive the ancestral "circumambulation", but to make it a spectacle reproducing the sumptuous Ommegang offered, in 1549, by the city of Brussels to Charles V and his son Philip II.

[1] The current event brings together about 1,400 extras, including several dozen horse riders, crossbowmen, archers, fencers, and arquebusiers, to name a few, dressed in period costumes.

Jean-Pierre Castaldi,[15] Stéphane Bern,[16] Jacques Weber,[17] Francis Huster,[18] Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt,[19] and Patrick Poivre d'Arvor,[20] for example, have successively lent themselves to the exercise.