On Thursday, there was a phenomenon that occurs only once a year around mid-summer. A heart appeared on an old gravestone at Laken Cemetery in the northwest of Brussels. Weather permitting, the heart appears just once a year when the sun is at its highest point in the sky.
It’s a unique phenomenon. “There is a circle-shaped opening in the roof of the chapel and when the sun is at its highest point rays of sunlight shine through”, Tom Verhofstadt of Epitaaf, a not-for-profit group specialised in cemeteries.
“The rays of sunlight fall against one of the six corners to form a heart”.
The heart appears on the grave of Léonce Evrard and his wife Louise Flignot. The French couple lived in Laken. Louise Flignot died in 1916, Léonce Evrard passed away in 1919. The gravestone dates from 1920.
The heart attracts tourists from far and wide to Laken.
One of them told VRT Radio 2 that “This is something that is unique and there are not many cemeteries that have something like this. This the reason that we have come here today”.
