Day 2 in Brussels: Victor Horta’s House
I’m finding Brussels to be a bit like Paris, only more compact. I covered practically half the city on foot (not completely on purpose) in just a few hours on my first day here. It’s so small, though, that all the blocks seem to end in plazas, so you just end up walking around in circles. I was constantly peering at my map yesterday, confused by the multiple directions and Flemish street names. Perhaps by the middle of the week, when I leave, I’ll be completely at home.
Actually, I take that back -- Brussels isn’t much like Paris, it’s just close to France and there are a lot of people here who speak French. It’s a lot smaller, and, I’m finding, kinda sterile. This is an unfair judgement after my very limited experience, I’m sure, but it is a strong first impression. It is very clean and quite beautiful, but it seems lacking in that organic (and sometimes nasty) quality that many places have, where, if you wander around without a particular agenda in mind, you find things could unexpectedly change and something very interesting could happen (hopefully, not some sort of assault) once you turn a corner. I was strolling around the neighborhood of St. Gilles today, and I kept walking and walking and turning corners, but…nothing. Admittedly, it was a Sunday, everything was closed, and it’s a high-end neighborhood (very Upper East Side), but I found myself feeling a bit disappointed nonetheless. Well, this is what I get for not making plans with/asking other people for suggestions – it takes a lot longer to find what you are looking for if you insist upon wandering around aimlessly in the hope of finding it yourself by dumb luck.
I took the metro to St. Gilles to visit La Musée Horta/Het Hortamuseum/The Horta Museum (I’ve learned after about 48 hours here in Brussels that the English language comes third, after French and Flemish, and is sometimes omitted entirely). It was truly wonderful, and I have to remember to personally thank the bellman who happened to be standing next to the snotty, affected concierge (whom I hate, and whose opinion I was ready to ignore entirely) in my hotel who was giving me directions to it yesterday. It wasn’t at the top of my list of things to do, but the bellman looked at me and said, in a very emphatic and earnest tone, that I really SHOULD go. It’s a bit farther than many of the other sights on my list, but I decided to take his advice and head out there this afternoon.
The Horta Museum is actually the private house and studio, constructed around 1900, of Victor Horta, an architect and one of the foremost creators of the Art Nouveau style, an ornamental language which fused exterior and interior design. Although I have some strong opinions about what I do, and do not, like in building and furniture design, I consider myself neither an expert/connoiseur, nor a declared aficionado, of this particular style. Once I entered (after an attendant, who looked very much like a younger version of the conductor Kent Nagano, collected my admission fee of 7 euros), and looked around, however, I felt an immediate (and, for me, rare) sense of calm. The design and details are perfect, showing (as described on www.trabel.com) one of the great innovations of Horta: the rooms are built around a central hall; from the glass ceiling, light falls into the house, thereby creating a much more natural illumination of the building than was the case in the traditional late 19th-century houses in Belgium. There were these magnificent stained-glass portions built into the roof, and mirrors built on either side, that made the glorious, colorfully-illuminated light look like it went on for miles. It was just beautiful. The only thing that interfered with the experience was the preponderance of the color mauve (in the carpets and some of the wallpaper and upholstery), but I got over that. After lingering for quite awhile, I gave into the fact that it was time to go, and headed back to the Place Rogier.
I got back to my hotel room, and settled in to address some stuff for work and the meetings which start tomorrow, but I had a hard time concentrating. Walking a lot in a strange city makes you think, and thinking isn’t always conducive to accomplishing tasks at hand.
Actually, I take that back -- Brussels isn’t much like Paris, it’s just close to France and there are a lot of people here who speak French. It’s a lot smaller, and, I’m finding, kinda sterile. This is an unfair judgement after my very limited experience, I’m sure, but it is a strong first impression. It is very clean and quite beautiful, but it seems lacking in that organic (and sometimes nasty) quality that many places have, where, if you wander around without a particular agenda in mind, you find things could unexpectedly change and something very interesting could happen (hopefully, not some sort of assault) once you turn a corner. I was strolling around the neighborhood of St. Gilles today, and I kept walking and walking and turning corners, but…nothing. Admittedly, it was a Sunday, everything was closed, and it’s a high-end neighborhood (very Upper East Side), but I found myself feeling a bit disappointed nonetheless. Well, this is what I get for not making plans with/asking other people for suggestions – it takes a lot longer to find what you are looking for if you insist upon wandering around aimlessly in the hope of finding it yourself by dumb luck.
I took the metro to St. Gilles to visit La Musée Horta/Het Hortamuseum/The Horta Museum (I’ve learned after about 48 hours here in Brussels that the English language comes third, after French and Flemish, and is sometimes omitted entirely). It was truly wonderful, and I have to remember to personally thank the bellman who happened to be standing next to the snotty, affected concierge (whom I hate, and whose opinion I was ready to ignore entirely) in my hotel who was giving me directions to it yesterday. It wasn’t at the top of my list of things to do, but the bellman looked at me and said, in a very emphatic and earnest tone, that I really SHOULD go. It’s a bit farther than many of the other sights on my list, but I decided to take his advice and head out there this afternoon.
The Horta Museum is actually the private house and studio, constructed around 1900, of Victor Horta, an architect and one of the foremost creators of the Art Nouveau style, an ornamental language which fused exterior and interior design. Although I have some strong opinions about what I do, and do not, like in building and furniture design, I consider myself neither an expert/connoiseur, nor a declared aficionado, of this particular style. Once I entered (after an attendant, who looked very much like a younger version of the conductor Kent Nagano, collected my admission fee of 7 euros), and looked around, however, I felt an immediate (and, for me, rare) sense of calm. The design and details are perfect, showing (as described on www.trabel.com) one of the great innovations of Horta: the rooms are built around a central hall; from the glass ceiling, light falls into the house, thereby creating a much more natural illumination of the building than was the case in the traditional late 19th-century houses in Belgium. There were these magnificent stained-glass portions built into the roof, and mirrors built on either side, that made the glorious, colorfully-illuminated light look like it went on for miles. It was just beautiful. The only thing that interfered with the experience was the preponderance of the color mauve (in the carpets and some of the wallpaper and upholstery), but I got over that. After lingering for quite awhile, I gave into the fact that it was time to go, and headed back to the Place Rogier.
I got back to my hotel room, and settled in to address some stuff for work and the meetings which start tomorrow, but I had a hard time concentrating. Walking a lot in a strange city makes you think, and thinking isn’t always conducive to accomplishing tasks at hand.
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