It’s exactly 100 years since the Belgian state approved the construction of the Palais des Beaux-Arts on the Mont des Arts in Brussels.
The centenary is being celebrated with an exhibition titled Project Palace (April 1 to July 21) in which ten contemporary artists have been invited to produce works that reflect on the role of the art centre (now called Bozar).
Not many people know anything about the building that once stood on this site. The Pensionnat Heger was a Belgian girls’ boarding school where Charlotte and Emily Brontë studied in 1842-3.
Charlotte fell under the spell of her French teacher Constantin Heger and wrote a series of desperate love letters after she returned to England. Her novels The Professor and Villette are based on her stay in Brussels.
The school was torn down in about 1909 as part of the transformation of the Mont des Arts neighbourhood. And the Brontë connection has been totally forgotten, apart from a dusty plaque on a side wall. It was put up in 1979 by members of the Brontë Society.
Derek Blyth’s hidden secret of the day: Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling “The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium”. He picks out one of his favourite hidden secrets for The Brussels Times every day.
