Den Spauwer

Near the famous Grand Place of Brussels, at the corner of Steenstraat and Kolenmarkt, sits a muurfontein (wall fountain) called Den Spauwer in Dutch or Le Cracheur in French. In either language, it means “the spewer” and it can’t be more descriptive than that.

The fountain is a bust of Triton spitting water from his mouth in a comical fashion. Though fixed in a niche on a Neoclassical-style house built in 1823, the fountain itself is believed to have been made by sculptor François Joseph Janssens in 1769 or so, replacing a much older piece. It is also known that the site has been occupied by a wall fountain all the way since the 14th century.

The Spewer’s predecessor was the Fountain of the Three Goddesses, which first appears in historical records in 1382. Each of the goddesses stood in a niche and sprayed water from her nipples onto the tub at her feet, a popular novelty at the time.

According to a legend, in 1477, the Fountain of the Three Goddesses spouted wine on the occasion of the wedding of Duchess Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor. It is said that one local got carried away, drank wine straight from the goddesses’ nipples and died on the street. Ashamed, his parents had a new fountain—Den Spauwer—and no fountain in Brussels ever spouted wine again.