Take the time for a virtual tour around Brussels' most impressive architectural treats. I'll be your guide. Most of the photos are my own, except when I forgot my camera.
* Art Nouveau
Brussels' most eye-catching architectural legacy is courtesy of the Art Nouveau movement.
Briefly, Art nouveau was a highly-practical design movement which achieved its greatest successes at the fin de siecle. It was a rejection of the fussy and academic neo-classicism that had come before it. Art Nouveau has a craftwork flavour, and takes inspiration from nature rather than submitting to the rigidity and purity of form the classicists strove to achieve.
In Paris it was seen in graphics - such as the famous Chat Noir poster which has adorned many a student bedroom wall (including mine once). In Britain we got the designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Arthur Lasenby Liberty (of the department store fame) and William Morris - whose wallpaper designs are as good as, if not better, than Laura Ashley's premium vintage range.
Recognise this man? You Horta, it's Victor
Victor knew how to design staircases, just look at those vegetal lines
Art Nouveau hit Brussels in style and largely thanks to one man - Victor Horta. His most famous building is the Hotel Tassel but his influence is everywhere. Most especially in my area of town, Ixelles. My road - the rue du Lac - has a few great examples.
Don't you wish your front door was a freak like me?
Weird and wonderful on the Rue du Lac
Cast iron railings Horta style
* The Modern
Cripes! This is what Brussels doesn't do so well. Town planning is less sympathetic than in the UK and beautiful historic buildings can suddenly find themselves paled in the shadow of a concrete-spined, glass monstrosity. Again my road is no exception. Just across the street from the gorgeous art nouveau house is this sweeping behemoth of a building. It's called Place Biarritz and it's an ugly beast. It's like the cliffs of Dover.
Place Biarritz
Worse still is this arrogant phallic thrust to a darker place. This mirrored-monster is the Blue Tower, a brutal addition to the Avenue Louise. It's an office block and it achieves two remarkable feats - firstly, to block all of the sun in my garden until after midday, secondly, to make Place Biarritz look pretty. It also houses a branch of the Brussels' Pret A Manger clone, Exki (which locals pronounce ecky... as in ooh ecky thumb).
Where's my morning sun? On the other side of this
I think the less said about the modern the better.
* War Memorials
Belgium is the battlefield of Europe so it's perhaps unsurprising Brussels houses a vast collection of war memorials. Most major streets and squares in the capital will house at least one monument to a conflict.
This art deco monument stands opposite the Palais de Justice in Poelaert commemorating those who died in the First World War.
The soldiers look very grim - but wouldn't you after a year in the trenches?
A second larger monument sits nearby, capped with a giant monolith and an angel leading the fallen to heaven. This represents both World Wars.
Monolith memorial
The Palais de Justice deserves a quick mention. It's a Cyclopean achievement and dwarfs everything in the vicinity. Students who were made to read Edmund Burke will recognise it as sublime rather than beautiful. I find it impressive but confused - there's a bit of Roman, Doric Greek, Egyptian and even Assyrian motifs. The Palace of Justice is under renovation at the moment so isn't looking its best in my photo. Personally, I still prefer the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. Locals might agree with me, apparently they were so unhappy when it opened in the 1880s they stormed the gates and pissed and shitted all over it. It was a dirty fortnight with the mops before the doors opened again.
"You've caught me at a bad time," said the Palais de Justice
Here's my favourite memorial at the end of our road commemorating Baron Jean Michel de Selys Longchamps - now that's a name. He was Belgian aristocracy and an ace fighter pilot to boot, very Boys' Own. Baron Longchamps fought with the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk. He was imprisoned by the Vichy regime but managed to escape to England where he joined the RAF's 609 Squadron. In January 1943, acting without orders and under his own initiative he attacked and destroyed the Gestapo's HQ in Brussels on Avenue Louise with his Typhoon. He died eight months later, crash landing at an RAF airbase in Kent. Locals never forgot this maverick and erected this golden homage.
* Ecclesiastical architecture
Brussels lacks an ecclesiastical Top Trump - there's certainly no St Peter's or St Paul's. But without a headline act, there's plenty of second division interest.
Take the Basilique du Sacre Coeur for example. Viewed from the Upper Town (where the French aristocracy once looked down at the filthy Flemish peasantry) it's a commanding character on the Brussels skyline. It's a surprisingly modern addition to town. Construction began in 1905 under orders of good old King Leopold II (Belgium's most beloved monarch). It's no accident either that it looks like the Sacre Coeur in Montmartre; the Belgian King wanted a local landmark to rival Paris' iconic church. Unfortunately Leopold's ambition outweighed his wallet. Like a 1900s episode of Grand Designs, he ran out of money half way through construction. I can just see an early 20th Century Kevin McCloud raising one arched brow to the camera with an unspoken "told you so" as Leopold confesses he doesn't have a project manager and wants to "move in by Christmas".
Photoshop fans might spot my ever so subtle dodge on the Sacre Coeur
This is Notre-Dame de la Chapelle, which is nearly 800 years older than the Sacre Coeur. In fact, it is Brussels' oldest church. Its base is broad and Gothic but the bell tower is pure Baroque. The reason for this is the original was destroyed in a French artillery bombardment in 1695. It's not the only crime that accursed nation has to answer for in this fair city, I can tell you. On a lighter note, this is where Pieter Bruegel the Elder worshipped.
Baroque tower courtesy of France, Notre-Dame de la Chapelle
This is our local church, the Eglise Saint Croix, just off Place Flagey. It's a brick-built 1850s art deco church. It's well defined and has a strong silhouette but that's as far as I'm prepared to go. In the evening sun it catches some pretty reflections in the etangs d'Ixelles it overlooks.
Nearby is the Abbaye de la Cambre which sits in a secluded woodland. It's hard to believe walking around the grounds that you're a two minute walk from the bustle and hookers of the Avenue Louise. It's a medieval abbey, but the French Revolutionary army put a sudden stop to centuries of worship. No doubt the monks of the Abbey got a certain schadenfreude when events unfolded 15 miles down the road on June 18, 1815.
The reflection of the Abbaye de la Cambre in one of its ornamental ponds
* The Grand Place
Marvel at medieval architecture while simultaneously photobombing Japanese tourists' holiday snaps. It can only happen at the Grand Place.
The Hotel de Ville
The Grand Place is a late medieval square and as impressive as anything I've seen in Venice or Rome. It's hard to believe this was all marshland until the 12th Century. The Grand Place is a statement of Protestant commercialism over Catholic might and mysticism - but there's plenty of dialogue between the two. Take the Maison du Roi, for example. It was commissioned by Charles V (the most degenerate of a degenerate line of Hapsburg monarchs) in 1515 to overshadow the Hotel de Ville. There was no expense spared and when the first sank into the boggy ground, he simply bankrolled the replacement. However, it still falls some way short of matching the municipal magnificence of the Hotel de Ville.
Guild houses on the Grand Place through a 24mm lens
But I prefer the guild houses, representing the cities various commercial concerns. These gilded, slender statements of wealth remind me of galleys packed tight in battle formation. So right to left in the picture above is the Roi d'Espagne pub (once home to the guild of bakers). Next door is the tallow-makers' guildhouse, followed by the Maison du Sac. My favourite is the archers' guild at number five. It features representations of War and Peace as well as four of the most colourful Roman emperors including Trajan, Tiberius, Augustus and Julius Caesar. Each emperor carries a symbol of their life. Caesar clutches a bloody heart for rebellion and disunity.
To understand the flowing, tracery and the billowing, organic stonework around the Grand Place it's important to know a little something of the Landsknecht, the mercenary pikemen who supported European armies from the 15th-16th Centuries. A couple of years ago I'd read Patrick Leigh Fermor's recollections of his travels as a teenager from London to Constantinople. He made the connection so I can't take the credit but he's bang on the money with his assessment. The Landsknecht lived short, brutal and miserable blood-soaked lives. To lighten the mood they slashed and puffed their sumptuous shirts in the most dandyish fashions, think Adam Ant. But their elaborate style permeated every aspect of European design of the time, from heraldry to masonry... just as their pikes perforated many European enemies.
What a fanny! Here's a Landsknecht from 1585 in all his pomp
* And the rest
The National Broadcasting Institute.
A stone throw from our flat is this 1930s yellow brick structure. It was once a radio station but now houses concerts and smart café-cum-restaurants. Locals call it the paquebot, which translates as cruise liner.
The Atomium
An enormous molecule built for the 1958 World Fair in Brussels.
I guess it's ok if you're into that sort of thing
The Cathedral
Oh yeah, I forgot about this. Oops.
Not the cathedral, but my old friend Christian to fill the awkward silence
