When does marketing and merchandising overwhelm the quality of a product?  The chocolates of Pierre Marcolini, which friends in Antwerp and Brussels explained were the finest, are so highly aestheticized that they seem more like precious stones than sweets.  The store in Antwerp could be mistaken for a jewelers, with its sumptuous finishes, ethereal lighting, and museum-like vitrines.  Even the company’s website is an over-the-top experience, with hyper-real images of cocoa beans, pistachio nuts, orange rinds, and all the other things that go into their confections.  This formal splendor quenched any need I had to taste the chocolate.

When in Belgium I sampled all the predictable forms of chocolate, including sauce over ice cream, squares from a fancy shop on Rue Sablon, and a drink so thick that it felt as if it were at any moment going to settle into a solid.  But my favorite chocolate experience was walking the cobbled streets of Gent at nightfall (which happens in the summer after ten o'clock) and eating a Cote d'Or hazelnut bar from its plastic wrapper, the crumbs spilling all over my dress.  The brand was founded in 1883, and their logo is a roaring elephant, to evoke the African origin of the beans.  In the same way that it’s ridiculous to think that tea comes from England, it’s ridiculous to think that chocolate comes from Belgium.  Nonetheless we do, and, if nothing else, it gives a reason to indulge.

I think of churches as Medieval structures, built from stone and sweat, heavy with history and mythology.  So the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Koekelberg, Brussels, has an unexpected character.  It’s immense, described as the fifth largest Christian church in the world.  And it’s modern, constructed in increments from 1905 to 1969.  A display of archival photos inside shows teams of workers assembling the structure’s steel frame and cladding.  The men look as if they could be building a skyscraper, or a stadium.

There’s a non-church feeling to the church.  It’s built in the Art Deco style, not the first style one associates with religious architecture, with details that seem more stylish than symbolic.  The ceramic blocks on the interior are inventively shaped but have a heavy, institutional aspect. Although appropriately shadowed, the cavernous halls and passages give one the feeling of an old, underused Eastern European train station.  Perhaps this was all only to prepare us for the release that came as we stepped out onto the roof of the building.  From here, circling the dome, we caught a breeze and enjoyed splendid views across the city.  We were able to point out where we were staying and where we wanted to go later that day.  In the end the church offered simple, secular pleasures.

Driving back and forth along the Avenue de Tervueren in Brussels, we got tantalizing glimpses through a low steel fence of the Palais Stoclet, a home by architect Joseph Hofman built in 1911 for industrialist Adolphe Stoclet.  It’s still owned by the family, has been named a UNESCO heritage site, and is, very occasionally, open to the public.  It was closed when we were there.  Sitting among the other larger, hopelessly bourgeois-looking brick and stone homes on this elegant tree-lined street, the Palais, with its pearlish white marble walls and attenuated proportions, seemed finer and sweeter, like an apparition.

Those who have been fortunate enough to step inside describe rooms finished with sumptuous Weiner Werkstatte interiors.  The grainy black and white photographs we have show mosaics on the floors, murals on the walls, and custom-designed furniture and tableware by Hoffman and Koloman Moser in each room.  The dining room is graced by the four legendary Klimt mosaic friezes “The Tree of Life."  Although they’ve been seen by only a handful of visitors, they’re well-known through the studies Klimt executed for them.  While I’d love to have visited I’m mostly just pleased that the house, inside and outside, is intact.  (I can imagine collector Ronald Lauder buying the klimt mosaics and having them reinstalled at the Neue Galerie in New York, behind bulletproof glass.)  That the house remains a mystery to me, and most other people too, is just fine.

Rome has the Trevi Fountain, New York City has the Statue of Liberty, and Brussels has the Manneken Pis, a statue of a little boy wetting the ground in front of him. As civic monuments go it’s not a terribly noble one, although there are stories that the statue depicts the historic actions of a boy insulting enemy soldiers or, alternately, extinguishing a fire. The statue is smaller than you’d expect, that is, smaller than a real boy, and stands on a high pedestal in a tiny gated corner garden. Visiting dignitaries often come by to pay their respects and dress the statue in their national costume. In the past he’s been dressed in the robes of a Tibetan monk, various football (that’s soccer) team jerseys, and a rhinestone-embellished Elvis-style pantsuit.

The entire tourist district seems to have sprung up around it.  Just across the road are a restaurant called Manneken Pis and a chocolate shop called Manneken Pis. And the curio shops up and down the small cobbled streets sell all sorts of ridiculous souvenirs with the little guy on it, including figurine corkscrews with the screw placed you-know-where. One friend in Belgium, who has lived there for two decades, observed that there was a “chaotic” element to Brussels, something unique to the culture. I think that any city that accepts a pissing boy as their mascot must have a healthy respect for the chaotic, and for the ridiculous and the self-mocking too.  They’re are all rather marvelous qualities.