Brussels-Central railway station

The station is bound up with the building of the North-South junction. It was only in 1903 that the Belgian State and the City of Brussels took a concrete decision to link the North and South stations. In 1910 Victor Horta received the commission for the future central station. He delivered preliminary designs in 1912-1913; the study was not yet complete when war broke out in 1914, and a further preliminary design followed in 1920.

The law of 11 July 1935 created the National Office for the Completion of the North-South Junction, which put the project back on track. The design adopted for the present site dates from 1936; Horta's contract was signed in March 1937, and building work started that year. On 11 April 1945 Horta, then 84, asked the Office to end his assignment for health reasons. He put forward Maxime Brunfaut, his collaborator, who had worked on the project until May 1940, as his successor. Brunfaut directed the works from 1945 and refused to alter the exterior of the monument, but the basic plans had to change: 250 steam trains over 18 operating hours had been foreseen in 1937, while by 1945 the forecast had risen to 750 electric trains over 20 hours.

King Baudouin inaugurated the station on 4 October 1952, together with the junction. While the junction was being planned, the intermediate stations were called "halts"; the name Central Station came into use at the inauguration. An underground complex opening onto the rue du Marché aux Herbes followed in 1954, a network of covered passages to the neighbouring streets around 1960, and the station was linked to the "Gare Centrale" metro station in 1965-1969. On 16 March 1995 a decree of the Brussels government placed on the safeguard list the outer façades of the block, the roofs, the original internal structure, the ticket hall and the staircase leading from it to the first underground level. Major works from 2000 to 2009, carried out within the limits of that protection, cleaned the façades, restored and reorganised the ticket hall and opened a central corridor on the mezzanine beneath a 12-metre glass dome.

The surface building occupies the triangle formed by the Carrefour de l'Europe, the Putterie, the Cantersteen and the Boulevard de l'Impératrice, above an underground station whose tracks run in a curve. The triangular shape of the site and its slope complicate the brief. The plan is trapezoidal, on five levels, plus a half-level that takes up the drop towards the Boulevard de l'Impératrice.

From the start of the project Horta gave up Art Nouveau for a plain, functional architecture in the spirit of the official international architecture of the late 1930s, with classical and Art Deco echoes. His last major work recalls earlier ones, notably the Maison du Peuple and the Palais des Beaux-Arts.

The façades are clad in white stone, from Gobertange and from Reffroy, between a plinth and a crowning band of Belgian blue stone. The main entrance, on the Carrefour de l'Europe, is a concave façade: a wide open passage between four columns, under a canopy that carries the words "BRUXELLES CENTRAL" and "BRUSSEL CENTRAAL" on either side of the inaugural plaque. On the upper floors, nine tall windows stand for the Belgian provinces, which numbered only nine at the time. Two reliefs by Charles Leplae, dated 1954, flank the entrance and evoke the old Putterie districts, demolished during the junction works.

Inside, the walls are faced with travertine, with Belgian blue marble skirtings, and the floor is paved with Larrys stone, also called Mirabeau stone, inlaid with the emblems of Brussels, Liège and Antwerp. Glass slabs flood the ticket hall with natural light from above, and a fresco by Joseph Hayez above the entrance on the Carrefour de l'Europe side evokes the archangel Saint Michael and some Belgian cities. A monumental staircase 9 metres wide leads from the ticket hall to the mezzanine below street level, which holds a waiting room, shops and circulation space; further down, six curved tracks run alongside three platforms 300 metres long and 8 metres wide.

Moving from daylight to these artificially lit levels was a concern for Brunfaut: he wanted a gradual transition, with a soft light close to daylight on the stairs, the passages and the platforms.

The station is in service on line 0, the North-South junction, and is one of the three main stations of Brussels, with the North and South stations. The royal family no longer uses the royal lounge on the mezzanine, which the architects planned for distinguished guests and as its own waiting room.

The main entrance faces the Carrefour de l'Europe, and another opens onto the rue Cantersteen. The ticket hall is on the ground floor; the grand staircase leads down from it to the mezzanine, from which the platforms are reached.