Heritage brochure - The Cinquantenaire park

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the cinquantenaire park, a birthday present for belgium

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rigin and development

Well known to all Brussels residents and widely appreciated, this green space is as much a green lung for the capital as one of its major heritage sites. Covering thirty hectares, it is pentagon-shaped, like the Brussels city limits...

Although the site is mainly attached, administratively, to the City of Brussels, its triangular tip lies in Etterbeek district and it is owned by the federal government!

The main institutions it houses are the Art and History Museum - incorporating the Royal Art and History Museums -, the Royal Army and Military History Museum, the Automobile Museum or “Autoworld”, the Royal Artistic Heritage Institute (IRPA) and the Great Mosque of Brussels.

In ancient times this was treacherous terrain, with marshes, crevasses and steep slopes, called the “Linthout Plateau”. From the middle of the 19th century, the site was reserved for the use of the “Civil Guard”, as a training ground for this militia.

The Cinquantenaire Park has an explicitly informative name. The first version of the site appeared in 1880, with the aim of celebrating 50 years of Belgian independence. However, the importance of this name should not be exaggerated: the place would be constantly changing its layout - modifications to the buildings, new buildings - and the anniversary was really a pretext, the main explanation being the desire, in the second half of the 19th century, to make the capital more attractive in planning terms, which was a major concern for King Leopold II. He obviously intended to link the royal park (officially “Brussels Park”) and its district to the future Central Africa Museum in Tervueren via the future main roads, the Rue de la Loi and Avenue de Tervueren.

The development of the Cinquantenaire is part of the wider context of reorganising, improving and expanding the urban area, which took shape in the general plan of 1866 drawn up by Victor Besme, the “road inspector “ or official

in charge of the development and maintenance of transport routes. In addition to the park, the district would also see the development of the Marie-Louise, Ambiorix and Marguerite squares not far away.

There were two aims in mind: the site was to become a venue for temporary exhibitions and various events, and would host permanent collections. As a result, plans were made for the construction of both temporary and permanent buildings.

Major organisations On June 16, 1880, the “National Exhibition of Belgian Art and Industry Products” opened in celebration of Belgium’s Jubilee. At the time, the site looked like a finished development but due to a lack of funding, only two pavilions and the foundations of the colonnades and the triple arch were finished; the rest, including the arch, was only a stage set in wood and gypsum (plaster)! Behind this symmetrical building, several large temporary halls made of metal and glass were raised and demolished after the event! In the excitement of the exhibition, the area of the park was enlarged to its current size.

After this, up to the early 1930s, the Cinquantenaire established itself in the capital as the main venue for hosting major exhibitions and various events such as trade fairs and cycling, horse riding, car and hot air balloon events.

Then came two obviously different sites: while the Cinquantenaire remained devoted to museum institutions, the new Heysel site - developed for Belgium’s centenary in 1930 - became the new “Exhibition Centre”, hosting temporary exhibitions, fairs, shows, major sporting events, etc.

Several important dates would punctuate the park’s history: in 1888 the “Great International Science and Industry Competition”; in 1897 the Universal Exhibition - presented jointly by the Cinquantenaire and the Colonial Palace and its park next to Tervueren, two sites connected by the newly built Avenue de Tervueren; and in 1910 a new Universal Exhibition held partly in the park.

A park in progress In quiet periods, the park, with all the big events gone, returned to its never-ending development. For the competition held in 1888, an “international machinery hall” was built by the companies Cockerill and Rolin, a huge metal structure 300 metres long and 70 wide, with a single span! This construction would simply be dismantled after the event, to make way for a similar building for the World Exhibition of 1897. The idea at the time was to illustrate the wonders of the new techniques inherent in industrial progress. Only part of this second hall would be demolished to clear the view towards the Avenue de Tervueren, which gave rise to two different halls.

Still visible today, they house Autoworld on the one side and the Army Museum’s air and space section on the other. In the following years, the building work continued, including an Arab-inspired building designed to house a gigantic painting, the “Panorama of Cairo” (this building would become the “Great Mosque of Brussels) and the “Temple of Human Passions”, Victor Horta’s first major work.

The construction of the triumphal arch, constantly postponed, turned into a personal crusade for Leopold II, who saw in it a symbolic value... After disappointing visitors three times with its provisional completion, it was initially designed in the form of a single arch and would end up as three arches of the same size. This was an expensive project and would have been impossible if the King had not set up the “Crown Foundation”, fuelled by money from the Congo. Impressive methods were used (dynamite for example!) and work advanced at a frantic pace, day and night! The work was completed in 1905, the driving force being the country’s 75th anniversary celebrations.

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rchitecture and decor

From early 1879 until his death in 1904, the architect Gédéon Bordiau was in charge of the overall design of the park and its buildings, as well as the layout of the exhibitions that took place there. Bordiau, who initially collaborated with Poelaert, the designer of the famous courthouse, succeeded the latter as the City of Brussels architect.

On his death, the project was taken over by a duo of architects, Charles Girault and Léopold Piron. The gardens, designed by Bordiau in 1880, were of two types: a French garden in front of the two main buildings, and English-style gardens on the verges. The entire site - park and buildings - was protected following its listing as a Brussels heritage site, the result of four phases spanning from 1976 to 2007. The park buildings are not in one single style: they incorporate neoclassical elements and Beaux-Arts undertones.

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ours and detours

We must not forget that at the end of the 19th century, Brussels knew nothing of the urbanisation that would mark it a few decades later. The Cinquantenaire Park started life in the open countryside!

As we said above, one of the great concerns of this project’s initiator, King Leopold II no less, was to magnify Brussels and raise it to the rank of a capital comparable to other major European capitals, primarily Paris. From the local point of view, it was a question of developing the city in this place and establishing an entry and exit «gate» to Tervueren and the countryside, in the form of a triumphal arch; sometimes we talk about the «Tervueren gate»...

The Temple of Human Passions was inaugurated in 1899, to house the huge sculpted work by Jef Lambeaux. Three days later, the monument was closed to the public: Lambeaux’ work was considered immoral, too obviously dealing with sensitive topics such as death, motherhood, suicide, seduction, debauchery and rape...

In early 1946, one of the site’s two main buildings, also called the «Bordiau halls», went up in flames due to a short circuit. This was the «Pavilion of Antiquity», which had housed collections linked with this period of history since the early 20th century. One of them was the superbly designed great Apamea mosaic, which had adorned sumptuous residences in Roman times. Fortunately, it emerged from the fire unscathed, miraculously protected by a layer of rubble. One of the buildings was rebuilt 20 years later, aligned with the old one: it is obvious at a glance that only the building housing part of the Army Museum is original.

The park contains an atomic shelter, erected in 1955 and located in front of the Albert-Elisabeth gallery - the junction between the building built in 1930 on the side of the Avenue des Nerviens and the Pavilion of Antiquity (formerly the South Bordiau hall). With the cold war and fears it would lead to further conflict, it was considered wise to have a safe place to store works of art.

There has been a replica of the Cinquantenaire’s triple arch in Nanchang, in south-east China since 2007; this copy is the gateway to a luxury hotel complex...

Nowadays the site still hosts major festive events, such as the start and finish of the Brussels 20km race.

www.visit.brussels copyright: Archives de la Ville de Bruxelles