Since 1979, the Archives Service of the City of Brussels is housed at no. 65 Rue des Tanneurs, in the former store of the Jules Waucquez company that developed and kept a cloth wholesale there during 75 years. This beautiful remainder of commercial architecture of the early 20th century was bought by the city of Brussels in 1976. The rolls of cloth then slowly disappeared from the heavy wooden racks to give way to the archives collections that had been preserved at the town hall since the 16th century.
The service is the most important archives depository of the country. Besides the records of the Ancien Régime established by the urban magistrate since the Middle Ages, the service also administers and preserves the documents handed over regularly by the Communal Services. Thereby, a series of large fonds are supplied, among which – whereby this list does not claim to be exhaustive – the  fonds of the Police, of the Educational System, of the Register Office, of Fine Arts, Public Works, Finance, and Electoral and social Affairs.
Parallel to these administrative fonds, the Archives also collect publications on Brussels and all kinds of documents, as useless as they may seem, that allow us to keep a trace of the memory of the city and its habitants in order to write their history.