Send Gift Baskets to Sint-Pieters-Leeuw, Belgium

This municipality is one of the largest in Flemish Brabant. Over time, the rural settlement grew into a significant residential and professional community. With a long history behind it, Sint-Pieters-Leeuw has a lot to offer.

It is a deed of donation from the 9th century by ‘dame Angela,” a Brabant noblewoman, in which a ‘domain’ with a parent church and nine subsidiary churches with a length of seven miles and a width of one mile has been donated to the chapter of Saint Peter in Deutz, Cologne.

As of 1236, the domain belonged to the Land of Gaasbeek. Gaasbeek became the seat of a ‘meierij’ (Dutch for a district over which the mayor has jurisdiction) and an aldermen’s college after Henry I, Duke of Brabant, granted the populace a copy of the local penal code in 1284.

In 1687, parts of the fiefdom of Gaasbeek were sold publicly. It was by marriage or inheritance that Coloma’s water castle, now the Municipal Cultural Centre, as well as the fiefdom rights and all kinds of provisions (among other mills), were acquired by essential courtiers and nobles, including Jan Karel Roose, a member of the Great Council of Mechelen, and Vital-Alex de Coloma, empress Maria-Theresia’s chamberlain.

A new administrative, residential community has been formed by joining the former municipalities of Sint-Pieters-Leeuw, Oudenaken, Ruisbroek, Sint-Laureins-Berchem, and Vlezenbeek as of Jan 1Jan 1, 1977.