Brussels City Hall opened its doors on Friday for the Fifth Flowertime Festival, giving visitors an opportunity to admire a gothic building bursting with surrealism and adorned with majestic bouquets.
Floral artists were still busy on Friday morning putting the finishing touches to their installations. Twenty-three representatives of the finest Belgian and international florists were given carte blanche to decorate 15 rooms in the town hall on the theme of surrealism.
“The year 2023 marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of René Magritte, this great artist who made Brussels shine internationally,” the alderman for Culture, Tourism and Major Events for the City of Brussels, Delphine Houba, said. Placing the festival under the banner of the quiet saboteur was therefore a way of paying tribute to the painter.
The visitor's walk begins with the work of Riana Setyanigrum, Wendy Kartini Mandik and Sigit Paripurno. The Indonesian team imagined a shimmering bird of paradise (“cenderawasih” by its local name), wrapped in leaves woven in the art of janur.
The stairwell then leads onlookers to the rooms, under a shower of flowers escaping from metal watering cans orchestrated by Leïla Floral.
A monumental paper thistle by Mio Gallery takes pride of place in the main hallway, while master florist Max Hurtaud adorns the aldermen’s chambers. His work, 'L’Envolée,' is inspired by the monarch butterflies of Mexico and echoes the painting 'La Place au Soleil' by the artist in the bowler hat.
In the town council chamber, thousands of flowers arranged by floral goldsmiths Maria Sofia Tavares and Marc Noël reflect the majesty of the place, while Damien Overputte and Ness Klorofyl have combined their worlds (luxury for one, ecology for the other) to imagine a Maximilian room under a Magrittian rain.
As for the mayor’s office, designed by Nele Ost, it is overflowing with paperwork, flowers and documents piled up in the four corners of the room.
Flowertime is held every two years, alternating with the Tapis de Fleurs on the Grand-Place. This year it takes place from 11 to 15 August. Admission tickets can be purchased in advance or on the spot, and combined with a visit to the Town Hall Tower. In parallel with the festival, the free 'Brussels in Bloom' route scatters colourful petals around the heart of the capital.
In 2019, at the last pre-Covid edition of Flowertime, 20,000 people strolled through the corridors of City Hall. “Flowertime is positioning Brussels in the summer tourist agenda,” both in Belgium and beyond our borders, Alderman for Economic Affairs Fabian Maingain said.
The event, in conjunction with 'Bruxelles en Fleurs,' is helping to put the spotlight on the capital by taking visitors on a stroll through downtown Brussels to discover the city’s hotels, restaurants and shops.
The festival ends on Tuesday.
