Index of places and topics

From mayor and bailiff to the last mayor of 1976, with language, finances and rural policemen.

Postcards, old photos, historic maps and works by Arthur Peeters.

Photographer and artist Arthur Peeters dreamed of a history trail: 40 information panels on the history of Diegem.

Farmers' guild, Davidsfonds, KAV, KWB, veterans, pensioners and the friends of the municipal school.

Baroque castle by Lucas Faid'herbe (1653-1654), known for its ceiling panels of the Labours of Hercules. William III of England had his headquarters here in 1693.

The Royal Brass Band of Diegem (1867) and the Royal Brass Band ‘De Eendracht’ (1876).

From a first small church in 1379 to the Gothic church of 1543, with pilgrims' house, sacrament tower and wall paintings.

Saint Roch against the plague, Lourdes in rough stone and the Infant Jesus of Prague.

Construction, Paul Stoffyn's art, war damage and parish priests of the church of Diegem-Lo (1926-1979).

From the churchyard around the church to the cemetery of 1908, and the gravestones of lords, millers and castle residents.

Balls by district, pigeon fanciers, drama clubs and sports clubs, and a lost script.

How Catherine displaced the old patron Cornelius in 1615, and why the people stayed faithful to him.

Named after its last occupants, Charles De Reine and Eugénie de Hase. It stood at the end of today's De Reinelaan, in a park with ponds and fountains.

Sixteen panels about the cafés of Diegem and their landlords, made for Diegem Klinkt 2025.

The Diegem night cross: a cyclo-cross classic since 1975, with winners such as Liboton, Nys and Van der Poel.

A town clerk describes his village in 1844: farming, quarries, mills, schools and typhus.

Parish priest Davidts's childhood memories: the sisters' school, the steam tram and the Easter fair.

Built in 1854 to a design by Louis Spaak. In front stand four 16th-century boundary stones from the ducal hunting ground of Saventerlo, marked with the St Andrew's cross.

The hamlet on the high ground towards Zaventem: once the dukes’ hunting ground, later chicory country, with its own parish since 1926 and a remarkably modern little church (1929).

Diegem's football club, from Dieghem-Sportif and the 1942 merger to promotion to the national leagues in 1977.

Cholera and smallpox, the doctors of Diegem and doctor-mayor Van der Aa.

An old farm on the Broekstraat with a medieval-style turret, a hotel-restaurant (‘Laiterie’) from 1903 and today the Donjon-Brasserie.

Restaurants and cafés in Diegem today: ’t Amusement, De Milde, Mismo and Il Barinetto.

Four centuries of education in Diegem, from the sexton and the poor table to the municipal school and the library.

A manorial mill from 1513. Burned down in 1918, rebuilt in 1922 by mayor Frans Dekelver. Its wheel disappeared in 1937 when the Woluwe was culverted.

Fields, livestock and chicory, and the factories that came as farming disappeared.

The mill at the Voorde, from the lords of Diegem to Marga's electricity.

The parish hall built in 1905 by Father Meeus.

A vanished manor near Nijpezele and the mills around it: the beguines' mill, the Jacobs mill and the Broekmolen.

Zaal Milde, the old inn In Sint-Cornelius, vanished houses and the little castle Bagatelle.

Wood panelling, a carved Way of the Cross, frescoes of the apostles. People even offered rabbits, hens or geese, auctioned after Mass.

The distant abbey near Aachen that brought Saint Cornelius to Diegem, and who collected the tithes after it.

From hunting forest and airfield to demolitions, care for the elderly and three centenarians.

Today's associations and initiatives, such as De Pastorijvrienden.

Acacias, Alice, De Coninck, Eiram, Les Lierres, Helene: six villas known from postcards.

Of the moated castle of the lords of Diegem, the 15th-century gatehouse with its two towers survives. The residence burned down shortly after the war; the municipality turned the site into a cultural centre.

Wet meadows where cattle grazed freely, and a ribbon of ponds between the village and Nijpezele.

Some sixteen water and windmills along the Woluwe and the Holbeek.

The Duivenmolen, mentioned as early as around 1400, was Diegem’s last water mill. After centuries of oil, gunpowder and grain, it is now a ruin next to the Ring.

The municipal school on the Zaventemsesteenweg, opened after Easter 1926.

Founded in 1900 in the hamlet of Lo, extended around 1911.

Old spellings, archaeological finds, the link with Kornelimünster and the successive lords of Diegem.

A vanished quarter by the elms, with water mills and the Boschbrugge over the Woluwe.

From the Houtweg to the Regimentsberg: what old road and field names tell us about Diegem.

A 17th-century building, possibly the chaplain's house mentioned in 1644.

The Baroque organ by Adriaan Rochet (1792) and the bells, from 1552 to the new Catherine of 1951.

The old road from Brussels to Haacht crossed the Woluwe at the Voorde, a ford. Here stood the toll, inns and mills – the heart of old Diegem.

From Bauwens’ paper mills (1725) to the De Coninck cardboard works, closed in 1971.

In 1880 the De Reine family gave land to the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy of Mechelen. The free girls' school moved in next door in 1919.

The Easter Monday pilgrimage at Diegem, depicted by Constantin Meunier and described by Georges Eekhoud in Kermesses (1884).

The Holy Ghost table, the sick house and the plague that carried off almost half of Diegem in 1635-1637.

From 40 houses in 1480 to almost 5,000 inhabitants, social housing and demolition for the airport and motorways.

From the first presbytery (1525) to the 1847 building by architect Louis Spaak.

Who served the parish: the sharing of the tithes, colourful priests, a sexton who taught dancing, and the verger.

How interchanges, motorways and the airport cut Diegem into pieces after 1950.

A late Gothic church in Diegem sandstone, begun around 1400 and consecrated in 1543. For centuries pilgrims have come here for Saint Cornelius.

For centuries Diegem lived from its stone; the pits yielded fossils, Roman graves and a Merovingian urn.

Cycling club founded in 1950 at the café «In St.-Anna»; from 1971 it organised the Omloop van N.O.-Brabant on Easter Saturday.

The little manor mill of Nijpezele: oil, powder, chicory and beer, until its demolition in 1974.

The Brussels–Leuven railway, the 1904 station and the new station of 1974–1975.

The St Cecilia choir, its precentors and conductors, and the mixed choir of 1967.

The cubist building Victor Servranckx designed in 1926 for the Panneels family.

From Van Diedeghem to Marga: the families who ruled Diegem, their castle, their debts and their pillory.

Calvinist millers in Diegem and Catholic ones in Vilvoorde fought over the water of the Woluwe (1563-1568).

Diegem's market square, with its shops, inns and the tram to Schaerbeek.

A spire built entirely of stone, often compared to a pagoda. In 1943 its roughly 5,000 stones (230 tonnes) were numbered and taken down; it was rebuilt in 1951.

Taken over in 1889 by Jan-Baptist Vanhooff, the bakery stayed in the Vanhooff family until Luc Vanhooff took it over in 1977.

Diegem's pioneer of abstract art (1897-1965) and other artists from the village.

A villa from around 1900, home of notary E. Van Beneden. Kommandantur during the war, then a post office, café-restaurant and now a hotel.

By Juul Reynaert, unveiled on 12 August 1923 in memory of 13 fallen soldiers.

From plunderers and army camps to 1830, the two world wars and the fallen.

The stream that gave birth to the village. Its last visible stretch flows through Diegem.

How the covered Woluwe became a motorway, from the 1950 roundabout to the big interchange of 1976.

The Jolige Uilenspiegels, the Chiro, Milac and ’t Diegemnerke, and the clubs of the 1960s and 1970s.