2023-10-05 09:34:33
It is among the most beautiful architectural heritages in Belgium. And yet, no one has the chance to visit it because it is closed to the public. The Palais Stoclet, located at the top of Avenue de Tervueren in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, is being talked about again because the Brussels Secretary of State for Urban Planning, Vooruit Ans Persoons, announced on the social network she intends to force its opening to the public. This, against the advice of the Stoclet family.
The Palais Stoclet is this private mansion designed at the beginning of the last century, at the top of Avenue de Tervueren, by the Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann for his friend the Belgian financier Adolphe Stoclet. The building with its geometric lines is not only avant-garde, but also a “total work”: its interior decoration, partly carried out by Gustave Klimt, its furniture, its everyday objects and its gardens form a whole.
In reality, the Palace has always divided the Stoclet heirs and the Brussels Region. For many years, the Region has been fighting to make this art nouveau jewel accessible to the public, while the family wants to dispose of it freely.
In 2009, despite a bitter legal battle led by the heirs, the entire Palace, with its contents, was classified as a UNESCO world heritage site. But it nevertheless remains inaccessible to the public.
Very recently, the region wanted to use public archives to reconstruct the interior of the Palace on video, for an exhibition, but the family opposed it. “To write in the abstract that the palace would be “closed to the public” is to present things in a fallacious manner. Contrary to what the cited parts try to make people believe, if it is undoubtedly a masterful work containing numerous objects of great artistic value, it is not a museum but first and foremost a a family residence and a treasure trove of memories. In other words, although of undeniable artistic interest, the hotel constitutes first and foremost an element of the intimacy of a family – an exceptional element, certainly, but which does not change its nature. The Stoclet family opens it as much as they can to the public and the State, to the extent permitted to avoid losing this character of a historic family home.“, we can read in the summary summons formulated by the family’s lawyer.
The Brussels Secretary of State for Urban Planning, Ans Persoons, annoyed to say the least, announced yesterday on X that she was going to try to impose its opening by legal means.
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