Former Waucquez store

These old stores (now home to the Belgian Comic Strip Center) are a masterpiece of Art Nouveau, designed by Victor Horta. For once, it is not a question of a private home, but of a "temple of commerce": the cloth merchant Charles Wauquez appealed to Horta to build a new wholesale store where to receive his customers but also shelter his stocks.

Opening hours and info on www.comicscenter.net.

FACADE

The facade is fairly regular, just curved in the center. On the ground floor, note the name plate on the left and the service entrance on the right.

Observe the base! Horta subtly compensates the slope of the street by a base of blue stone that restores the balance of the facade.

INTERIORS

This museum can be visited; you can easily admire these old stores. Once you have crossed the entrance porch, you come to an indoor place lit by a lamppost and a glazed skylight. In the axis, a staircase evokes the splendors of the classical architecture. The ironwork of the ramp has a motif of floret out of two stylized leaves, repeated on the floor in the railings.