Back to Brussels
I lived in Brussels for four years at the end of the 1980s/early 1990s. I’ve been back on a few day trips but never for long enough to return in leisure to old haunts. So a four-day weekend was a good exercise in memory jogging.
When retracing one’s steps in a city which was once familiar the muscles are a bit stiff the first two days but once flexed a few times the exercise becomes easier. I’ve never managed to familiarise myself with street names in the Belgian capital, perhaps because they all have two: one French, one Flemish. I couldn’t even remember the names of the streets around my old neighbourhood and had to look them up to write this!
And then once jolted, memories come flooding back: places of no apparent significance suddenly come into sharp focus. As I walked up one particular street in the central, uneven, SWS-facing pentagon that makes up the historic city centre, I suddenly remembered that here was where a friend’s daughter went to kindergarten and there a dry-cleaner I used occasionally. I was absurdly pleased that 34 years later it’s still there, identical. Well, it does have a notice in the window proudly announcing that it’s been in business since 1846 so I’m presuming it’s not going anywhere fast!
Other things however have changed radically: the Boulevard Anspach is now pedestrian. Restaurants and fast-food places that already overran the cobbled streets around the Grand Place have inched down my old street, which is also now pedestrian but ironically less of a haven of peace and quiet. I don’t think I’d want to live there now.
I ignored, as always, the tea-room/restaurant/bar at the end of my street which hasn’t changed. I did, however, go on pilgrimage down the rue de Tabora in hopes that my cheese shop, Le P’tit Normand, still occupies the tiny locale snuggled up against the St Nicholas church. It does! I’ve been using their recipe for Tiramisu for more than 30 years but they seem to be catering more to tourists these days than local residents.
My first port of call, however, was to the swimming pool/public bath house I used to go to several times a week, not so much for the exercise but because I knew I might bump into a certain young man there! I’d walk from my flat and never knew the name or address but recalled it was on a square and thought it must be the Place du Jeu de Balle in the shadow of the hulking Palais de Justice. (I have never, ever seen this courthouse without scaffolding. I’m not sure if it’s the same that it was draped in 37 years ago when I first arrived in the Belgian capital, but it seems to have spread!) I followed my instinct to a corner of the square and there was the pool, La Piscine du Centre, exactly as anticipated.
The funny thing is that I thought I’d be able to find my way back to my old flat from there almost blindfolded. After all, I’d done it so often in the past. But I got lost and had to resort to a map! And still when I arrived in the centre near the Grand Place I was completely disoriented: the shops had changed, there were more people and those damn street names! A couple of days later I returned with a friend and former neighbour. “Oh, my goodness, this empty store used to sell magic tricks, practical jokes and dressing-up clothes,” I reminded her. She’d forgotten!
But neither of us had forgotten that Wittamer, my favourite chocolatier, is on the Place du Grand Sablon so we went there and bought a small selection.
I was glad to see that Brussels’ former criminal disregard for its early 20th century architecture has been reversed and that city officials are now working hard to restore the beautiful early XXth century buildings still standing. The Bourse (Stock Exchange), for example, has been extensively restored and opened to the public in 2023. Inside is the Belgian Beer World, restaurants, co-working spaces, meeting rooms and so on but it’s worth just going in to look at the ceiling: it looks like a giant wedding cake decorated with fancy white icing!
When you see photos of how lovely used to be the rue de la loi (which heads east from the Parc de Bruxelles just north of the Royal Palace to the EU Commission HQ and beyond to the Parc du Cinquantenaire) and how horrendously ugly it is today with faceless glass buildings put up in the 1970s and 80s it just makes you want to cry. This film shows you what Brussels looked like in 1908.
When I left Brussels at the end of 1990, the restoration campaign to save Art Nouveau architect Victor Horta’s home at n°27 rue Américaine in the St Gilles quarter was just beginning. It lasted until 2014 and today the house is well worth visiting. But it’s small so only 45 people are allowed in at any one time (book online first) and no photography is allowed (hence none below). Some people complain but there’s a panel in the front-hall which explains why they’ve banned photography.
You can buy a combined ticked for Horta’s house and another Art Nouveau house a 10-minute walk away : the Maison Hannon, built between 1903 and 1904 for the industrialist Édouard Hannon and his wife by architect Jules Brunfaut. It opened to the public for the first time in June 2023, saved by the municipality of Saint-Gilles which bought it in 1979 after it was unsuccessfully put up for sale by the family in 1965 and then just abandoned for 24 years.
In 1984 the house was listed as a monument and a bit of renovation carried out but the first serious restoration and conservation campaign to stabilise the house and its décor was only undertaken in 2014. A second campaign started in 2022 with work not expected to be completed until 2030. Discreet white paper stickers are dotted here and there on the bits that restorers need to pay attention to.
A strong sign of the change of tack regarding old buildings is the vast Tour & Taxis building, a prime example of early XXth century industrial architecture just NW of the city centre. This former customs house and maritime station, a combination of Flemish Renaissance and Art Nouveau, whose spacious steel and glass central hall is known as the Royal Depot has been largely restored and is now a major hub for large cultural events with shops, restaurants, office space, apartments, a public park and public services. You may wonder why there’s a maritime station so far from the sea. Well it’s built on the XVIth century Willebroek Canal which connected Brussels to the Scheldt River and ultimately the North Sea.
The 40,000m2 maritime station served to receive goods by water, land and rail with customs and excise duties collected on-site at the Customs House and stored in bonded warehouses, the Public Depot and Royal Depot before being distributed. With the advent of the European Union the function of the building became irrelevant and by the 1990s it was abandoned until it was purchased outright by Extensa in 2014 and its transformation began.
My four-day weekend made me want to return without waiting another 30 years. I need to try the new chocolate place opposite Wittamer!
