Brussels

During his visit to the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris, Belgian King Leopold II was enchanted by the attraction Tour du Monde — a colourful collection of Japanese towers, Chinese gateways, and galleries in Hindu style.

A well-hidden pedestrian tunnel under the railway in Brussels, inaugurated in 1913, connects two branches of the Koninginnelaan.

The Wielemans brothers founded a brewery on a swampy meadow in Vorst in 1879. Their barley drink was so popular that their complex spread like an oil slick.

The statue of King Leopold II on the Throne Place, Brabo in Antwerp and Manneken Pis: one by one bronze monuments cast by the "Compagnie des Bronzes de Bruxelles."

Expo 58 left its mark on Brussels in every possible way. Just think of the reconstruction of the inner ring road and the Atomium. But what remains of it on the grounds of the world exhibition itself?

The Centenary Palace, a gift for Belgium's hundredth birthday, was the focal point of the World Exhibition in 1935, as the year in the pediments reveals.

Hundreds of workers and employees were swarming together on the Thurn & Taxis freight station platforms in Brussels a hundred years ago.

On the Luxemburgplein in Ixelles, you will come across the John Cockerill Monument. In 1872, a year after his statue was unveiled in Seraing, Willem Rau, Cockerill's loyal right-hand man, took the initiative to donate a statue to Brussels.

In a remote corner of the Maritime Station, a former freight station in Brussels, a water tower in the Art Nouveau style was built to refuel steam locomotives with water.