Cycling Hidden Histories – Tracing Power, Class, and Belief in the Streets of Brussels.

This bike excursion invited participants from across European cities to move through Brussels at a human pace and ask a simple but persistent question: who has the city been built for back in the day and now? Rather than following dates or monuments, we trace Brussels through imagined yet plausible lives shaped by class, belief, and power. From the historic city center and the Marché aux Poissons to hidden gardens, royal grounds, cemeteries, infrastructure hubs, and the Atomium, each stop becomes a lens on how social background determines where you live, move, work, and belong. We travel across time along lines of inequality, comparing past and present class systems, and noticing how little the underlying structures have shifted, even as their language and aesthetics have changed. Along the way, we encounter competing visions of the city: monumental, car oriented, business driven, often shaped by those in power, sometimes with bold ideas, sometimes at great social cost. By translating these historical approaches into today’s context, the tour opens up spaces for collective curiosity: not to judge or conclude, but to notice, question, and rethink how cities continue to quietly organize our everyday lives.