Saint-Gilles: Horta & the Parvis

Maison Hannon

A 1902 house with a metal winter garden leaning over the street.

You're standing on the corner of Avenue Brugmann and Avenue de la Jonction, in front of the house Jules Brunfaut designed for Marie Debard and Édouard Hannon in 1902. Hannon was an engineer at Solvay, and the couple had come back from the Paris exhibition of 1900 with their heads full of the French Art Nouveau of Émile Gallé. They asked their friend Brunfaut for a house in the manner of Horta. It was his only Art Nouveau building, and he put everything into it: a winter garden of glass and iron that leans out over the pavement, mosaics of holly leaves underfoot, stained glass by Raphaël Évaldre in the curved bow window, frescoes by Paul Baudouin around the staircase.

On the corner above you, Victor Rousseau's relief shows time suspended at sunset. After the Hannons' daughter died in 1965 the family sold up and the house was left to vandals. The facades and roof were listed in 1976, which blocked an apartment block, and the commune bought it in 1979. The museum opened in 2023.

It's open Thursday to Sunday, and the ticket covers the Horta Museum as well, on the same day.

Musée Horta

Victor Horta's own house and studio, eleven half-floors around three stairwells.

The two buildings at 23 and 25 Rue Américaine are the house and studio Victor Horta built for himself between 1898 and 1901, the years when Brussels Art Nouveau was at its height. Number 23 was the studio, number 25 the family house, and he joined them without a visible seam. Inside, eleven half-levels climb around three narrow stairwells to a glass roof, so the daylight falls through the middle of the plan. Horta sold the house in 1919 and the furniture was dispersed.

In 1961, the centenary year of his birth, the commune of Saint-Gilles bought it, pushed by Jean Delhaye, who had been Horta's pupil and then his assistant. The museum opened on 8 March 1969, and in 2000 UNESCO listed it along with three other Horta buildings in Brussels. Fifteen people go in every fifteen minutes, so book a slot online before you come, and give the visit about 45 minutes. It's closed on Mondays.