The Centraal Station of Brussels may not look like it, but it was designed by Victor Horta between the two great wars. As Horta died in 1947, he did not live to see it completed in 1952. His pupil Maxime Brunfaut, completed the work.
A lot of people don’t like the austere and brutal lines of Central Station. It doesn’t have the splendor of Antwerp Station or the charm of Schaarbeek. There are few flowing curvilinear forms here. It is a very blocky, functional building, but I think that it has some hidden charms. In the great hall, glass slabs of light fall down upon the passengers. Its facade is adorned with nine large vertical windows, representing the nine provinces of Belgium of the time.
When I am one of the 140,000 passengers who visit the station each day, I stop to marvel at the fascinating stone from which much of the building is constructed. I think it might be Gobertange, a type of white calcareous sandstone. It is cut against the grain to reveal its layers, and there are occasional fossilised shells buried deep inside its crevices. Like a lot of Brussels, you just need to dig a little bit deeper to find its jewels.
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