Between heaven and hell

A new guidebook to the European quarter of Brussels provides insights into its haphazard development and suggests that the city should have squeezed out the competition from Strasbourg long ago, writes Tim King.

With the honourable exception of the last weekend in May, the Euroquarter of Brussels is not exactly a pedestrians’ paradise. On Sunday (27 May), 20-odd thousand runners, joggers and walkers, will stream across the Cinquantenaire Park, round the Rond-Point Schuman and down the rue de la Loi, at the start of the Brussels 20km race. This year, as every year, they will pass between the headquarters of the European Commission - the Berlaymont - and the headquarters of the Council of Ministers - the Justus Lipsius.

The alert (or distracted?) runner might notice two changes to the landscape since last year’s race. The completion and opening of the Lex building, which houses the Council’s linguistic experts, has opened up a few more precious metres of pavement, onto which the hordes of runners will no doubt spread. The demolition of the Commission’s old JECL building, on the triangle of land between the Cinquantenaire Park and the Avenue de Cortenbergh, has re-opened lines of sight that have been closed for more than 50 years.

The very distracted runner might care to contemplate in what other western European city they would find such a large site being demolished in the absence of a clear plan as to what will replace the buildings that stood there. What is happening on the JECL site seems to respect the traditions of post-1950 development in the European quarter of Brussels: haphazard and only semi-planned.

On the weekends when there is not a 20km race, there are precious few pedestrians in the Euroquarter - and many of them are tourists, who have come in search of the sights of Brussels as "capital of Europe". They blink uncomprehendingly, trying to identify what EU institution belongs where, what the 1960s office block opposite the Berlaymont is, or just how to cross rue de la Loi.

If they are lucky, these visitors will come across a series of posters at the bottom of the Berlaymont, on its rue Archimède side, which recount some of the history of the area and of how the EU institutions came to be housed in it. They are an intelligent response to the development of the Euroquarter as a tourist destination.

Thierry Demey, who wrote the text of those posters, has now come up with a 530-page guidebook, Brussels, capital of Europe. Its readership should not be confined to tourists or day-trippers: it will (rightly) be seized upon by all those who work and/or live in the European quarter who have some curiosity about what is around them and what used to be around them.

Demey is some sort of medieval craftsman reconfigured for the 21st century: not content with researching and writing, he also takes the photographs and is his own publisher. He has already put out two marvellous guidebooks: one to the public gardens of Brussels, Bruxelles en vert, and one to the villages, woods and walks that surround Brussels, La ceinture verte de Bruxelles.

Compared with the two earlier guidebooks, there are two striking differences about Brussels, capital of Europe. Firstly, there are English and Dutch editions in addition to the French version. Secondly, although all three books are richly illustrated with photographs, in the first two books the photographs were mostly his own. But Brussels, capital of Europe has many more old photographs, dug up from archivists and merchants, the better to show how things used to be and how they developed.

There are pictures of Place Jourdan, the chaussée d’Etterbeek and what is now Rond-Point Schuman which are all the more poignant because they are just about recognisable. Those who think the Council building was named Justus Lipsius after Leuven’s 16th century philosopher-bureaucrat can contemplate the missing link: a photograph of rue Juste Lipse, one of the streets wiped away by the building work.

But Demey’s guide is not just about pretty pictures. It contains a strong foundation of history - particularly in the first section - explaining the expansion of Brussels and its economic and social conseqeuences. Demey argues, in a section dedicated to how Brussels came to be the de facto capital of Europe, that if the Belgium government had got its act together, Brussels might never have had to share the role with Luxembourg and Strasbourg. He names and explains the buildings and spaces of the Euroquarter, district by district, Leopold, Luxembourg, Cinquantenaire, Ambiorix, Marguerite and Marie-Louise - whether neo-classical or Art Nouveau or even modernist, they are all in there. He tells the stories of the Berlaymont convent, the Résidence Palace apartments and the ‘congress centre’ that became the European Parliament. He provides the context that the Euroquarter seems, at least at first glance, to lack. For good measure, he suggests a sight-seeing walking route. His book should embolden pedestrians to venture into the Euroquarter: it may not be paradise but nor is it hell.

• Thierry Demey, Brussels, capital of Europe, Badeaux, €38.

A new guidebook to the European quarter of Brussels provides insights into its haphazard development and suggests that the city should have squeezed out the competition from Strasbourg long ago, writes Tim King.