The site of today’s Osseghem Park was once a stone quarry operated by the Affligem abbey. When quarrying ended, the area was planted with beech trees. Keen to make the most of the surroundings of the Palace of Laeken, King Leopold II purchased this wooded area in 1909, as part of the roughly 200 hectares he had gradually assembled in Laeken. A large part was transferred to the City of Brussels in 1927 in preparation for the 1935 World’s Fair. Landscape architect Jules Buyssens was then commissioned to lay out these 17 hectares. He designed an irregular plan whose highlights include a remarkable open-air green theatre and a winding 500-metre pond whose banks still charm walkers. Fine groups of trees animate long perspectives, such as the four rows of cylindrical purple beeches lining the avenue to the highest point of the park. Osseghem Park can be read as a landscape shaped over time by human interventions, events and changing fashions, with remarkable trees, fauna and flora as key features. (Listed 16/10/1975)