The best city hikes and walks in De Grote Nete En Herenbossen

Graffiti: A giant portrait of Toots Thielemans adorns the side wall of building number 164 on Bergstraat in Heist-op-den-Berg. It's a work by local graffiti artist Björn De Weerdt. The piece is the focal point of the temporary Hnita Jazz Bar during this weekend's street fair. It was a deliberate choice to portray an artist with ties to Heist-op-den-Berg's rich jazz history. Thielemans played for the Hnita Jazz Club several times in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. In 2012, he gave one of his last public performances at Heist's CC Zwaneberg.

The pillory is a monument in the Antwerp town of Heist-op-den-Berg, located on Kerkplein. It is a 17th-century pillory, designed as an octagonal bluestone column. The pillory features a masked head with an iron ring. As a result of the French Revolution, the pillory was removed in 1797. In 1948, it was replaced on the slope of Heiste Berg and in 1970, it was placed on Kerkplein.

Paying tribute during the small climb up the mountain...

The church is actually on the mountain here...

To visit the town hall, you really do have to climb the mountain...

Originally a mansion, used as a town hall since 1844. Owned by the municipality since 1874. A wide house incorporated in the ribbon development with a plastered and painted, neoclassical façade of five bays and two storeys under a saddle roof (ridge parallel to the street, slates), from the first half of the 19th century, completely renovated and extended in 1932-1933 to a design by the provincial architect G. Careels. Offices and a wedding hall were provided on the ground floor, the council chamber in "Flemish style" on the upper floor, the archive rooms on the mansard floor. Double house elevation with an emphasised central bay ending in a neo-baroque dormer window with a curved pediment and flanking volutes: shoulder arch door in a neo-rocaille-tinted frame with a crowning relief of "Heistse Zwaan". Simple rectangular windows with small glazing bars, on the upper floor in flat frame under water list. Wide wooden cornice on modillions. Sober council chamber in "Flemish style" with wrought ironwork by the Heist blacksmith A. Vereecke (1883-1958): Falcon and Weasel from 1929, Sea Eagle from 1938. Source Inventory of Immovable Heritage

Guillaume Leclercq had this building and the three adjacent houses on the left designed in 1899. Leclercq was a rentier who came to live in Heist-op-den-Berg after his marriage to the rich Antwerp widow Octavie Delplace. Who was Guillielmus Lodewijk LECLERQ? He was born in Diest in 1855 and went to Brussels as a young man, working for a pastry chef. When this baker died, he married the widow. That is how he came to his first fortune. When he later became a widower himself, he married the widow Octavia Delplace in Bruges in 1880. Her first husband had a chocolaterie in Antwerp. She also brought a fortune with her. Building was a mania for him. He built the villas in the Stationsstraat, the row of houses with sayings above the door in the Halfstraat, the Gemeentezaal (1899) on the mountain with adjacent houses, the Grotstraat, various houses in the Bergstraat such as Villa Concience. It was said that he had a total of 99 houses. Because of superstition he refused to have 100. Guillielmus also had the first car in Heist.

Anyone passing by the Bergopstraat in Heist-op-den-Berg cannot miss it: a large monument on the side of the road. The tribute arch was placed there in 1920 to commemorate the victims of the First World War.