The Archives of the City of Brussels refers to both a service and a building that preserves the City's memories. The wealth and variety of its collections make it one of the most important historic centres in the country.

The service also collects and stores a large number of documents (brochures, advertising flyers, etc.), however unimportant or modest they may be, so that future generations can have a full and faithful image of as many aspects of Brussels life as possible.

All the itemised collections are listed there. Additional search instruments, such as cumulative tables of names created from raw data sources, can also help in your research.

However, this does not mean that all these archives can be consulted online. For legal reasons in particular (copyright, specific consultation procedures, privacy), some documents can only be consulted in the reading room. Most of these documents can be accessed via our External siteonline catalogue.

People carrying out research are requested to go to the Archives reading room, where they will find the tools they need for their search. The reading room employee and an archivist can also guide genealogists in their research. The main tools available to researchers are parish registers, civil status records and population census records.

For searches on people born or married and who lived or died in a different municipality, please contact the civil status and population services of the municipality in question.

External siteMAKE AN APPOINTMENT IN THE READING ROOM

1 – PROPERTY LOCATION

The promotion of the archives is one of the important roles performed by the Archives and involves making the stored documents available to the public through exhibitions, publications, symposiums, visits, educational activities and social network messages.

Other ways of promoting the archives include document loans to other institutions as part of exhibitions and the reproduction of documents for publication.

All these testimonies are of interest to us, whether they are photographs, old papers, printed papers, plans, correspondence, films, posters or postcards and come from families, associations or business activities. Sadly, too many documents and traces of history disappear due to house moves, deaths and business closures !