The area now occupied by the Marolles lay, during the Middle Ages, in the first circumvallation of the city of Brussels. Lepers were exiled to this area, and they were cared for by the Apostoline sisters, a religious group from which the toponymMarolles is thought to be derived. The sisters presence was short-lived, as they relocated to the Quai au Foin/Hooikaai in the Quays District. The first mention of a Walsche Plaetse probably indicates an early presence of French-speaking traders and craftsmen in the neighbourhood, as it was a logical arrival place for migrants from the south. In 1405, a fire broke out in the neighbourhood and destroyed some 2,400 homes. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the nobility and the bourgeoisie of Brussels built mansions along Rue Haute/Hoogstraat. The Marolles became a working class district in the succeeding centuries.
19th century
In 1860, during the reign of King Leopold I, a Royal decree announced the construction of a new Palace of Justice, and an international architectural contest was organised for its design. After several failed proposals, the then-Minister of Justice Victor Tesch appointed Joseph Poelaert to draw plans of the building in 1861. The first stone was laid on 31 October 1866, and the building was inaugurated on 15 October 1883, four years after Poelaert's death in 1879. The Palace's location is on the Galgenberg hill, where in the Middle Ages convicted criminals were hanged. For the Palace of Justice's construction, a section of the Marolles was demolished, while most of the park belonging to the House of Merode was also expropriated. The 75 landlords belonging to the nobility and the high bourgeoisie, many of whom lived in their homes, received large indemnities, while the other more modest inhabitants, about a hundred, were also forced to move by the Belgian government, though they were compensated with houses in the Tillens-Roosendaelgarden city in the Quartier du Chat in the Uccle municipality. Poelaert himself resided in the Marolles, only a few hundred metres from the building, on Rue des Minimes/Minimenstraat, in a house adjoining his vast offices and workshops and communicating with them. It is thus unlikely he saw himself as ruining the neighbourhood. Nonetheless, many angry citizens personally blamed Poelaert for the forced relocations, and the expression schieven architect became one of the most serious insults in the dialect of the Marolles.
20th and 21st centuries
Many Jews resided in the neighbourhood before the first Nazi arrests and deportations in the summer of 1942. Many of them had arrived there after fleeing the pogroms that accompanied the 1905 Russian Revolution, with others following between 1933 and 1938, after Hitler's accession to power in Germany. At that time, their population was estimated at about 3,000 people. A first synagogue had been built on Rue de Lenglentier/De Lenglentierstraat, where a commemorative plaque now recalls the deportations. From the Place de la Chapelle/Kapellemarkt to the Place du Jeu de Balle/Vossenplein, where a daily flea market has been held since 1873, along Rue Haute and Rue Blaes/Blaestraat, second-hand and popular shops have for some years given way to antique shops, marking a profound change to the neighbourhood. The 2006 Brussels riots began in this area.
Sights
The Cité Hellemans, a remarkable example of early 20th-century collective housing complexes, was built on the site of the neighbourhood's many squalid cul-de-sacs.
Rue Haute/Hoogstraat, one of the longest and oldest streets in the city, follows the course of an old Gallo-Roman road, and runs along Saint Peter's Hospital, built in 1935 on the site of a lepers' hospital.
