Mechelen

Mechelen developed on the navigable Dijle, whose channels served commerce and urban crafts. Cloth production had once been a major source of wealth, while bronze and brass working became distinctive local trades. By the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, court and judicial institutions gave the city an importance extending beyond its commercial fortunes.

Margaret of Austria established her court here in 1507. Her patronage drew artists and scholars, making Mechelen a centre from which Renaissance forms and humanist ideas circulated. Her role in the 1529 Peace of Cambrai linked the court to European diplomacy. After her death in 1530, the government moved to Brussels, ending Mechelen's position as the administrative capital. Its judicial role endured. From 1616 to 1796, the Great Council, the highest court of the southern Netherlands, occupied Margaret's former palace, keeping legal authority rooted in a city whose political court had departed.