Built between 1460 and 1515, the Erasmus House is one of the oldest houses in Brussels. Gothic in style, it has a roof bristling with stepped dormers, a harbinger of the Flemish Renaissance. Rotterdam-born humanist Desiderius Erasmus spent a few months at the house in 1521, working on a new edition of the New Testament. The museum, which opened in 1932, focuses on his life as well as the wider intellectual world of the Renaissance. Housed in a space furnished in Gothic and Renaissance styles, the collection includes artworks, sculptures and paintings by the Flemish masters, as well as numerous 16th-century books that trace the thinking of this highly original mind. At the back of the house are gardens from different periods. In 1987, landscape architect René Pechère created a garden of medicinal plants known as the Garden of Simples. Inspired by a medieval walled garden, it is very much a botanical portrait of Erasmus, containing around 100 plants known to 16th-century doctors. Beyond this walled garden lies the Philosophical Garden, designed by Benoît Fondu in 2000. It features a series of flowerbeds in which visitors can admire the plants and flowers that Erasmus contemplated on his many travels. It also houses contemporary artworks by Marie-Jo Lafontaine and Bob Verschueren, among other artists. The house and its gardens serve as a setting for concerts, lectures, exhibitions and workshops, making it a major centre of cultural life in Anderlecht.