Encounter and entrance

I was visiting a friend in Brussels and didn't really expect to visit anything UNESCO related, so came totally unprepared. We walked to the nearest of the four constituent sites from Horta metro station, which turned out to be Musée Horta. Unfortunately the front of the building is undergoing major reconstruction works, so other than the entrance door, there's only scaffolding to be seen.

The personnel is a mix of right out rude, derogatory and disinterested on one hand and super friendly and welcoming on the other hand, which was confusing and made us feel strangely unwelcome and looked down upon. It influenced our entire visit, as we couldn't really shake it off.

Texts are available in multiple languages: Dutch, English and French.

The site

There are free lockers and a museum shop. Photos are allowed up until the bedroom part. The reason for this is stated as there not being enough space. I'd like to think differently, but that's what it is. There are people from the museum watching you as you walk your way around the building in a self guided tour. It made me feel very uncomfortable, as if I was doing something wrong.

There's information in the booklet provided at the start of the tour as well as in the individual rooms. Although the information is very detailed, the overarching theme is missing. As I came quite unprepared, I didn't know how to interpret all the information.

Victor Horta had his house and office built next to each other and there are direct connections between them. Although it isn't immediately clear, as there isn't a clear divide between the two, you go through these separate buildings intermittently. While you learn about the history of the building, you go through his working office, guest room, bedroom and a handful of other rooms, right up to the attic where his daughter's bedroom is.

There are two videos in the tour. One is a bit of an artistic (lacking context, reason and information) interview-like go around to some buildings Victor Horta designed and letting seemingly random, although seemingly educated in the building/topic people share their thoughts around them. The other video is a timeline showing the different buildings Victor Horta designed and some major events in his live.

The building itself is beautiful as well as practical. Even though most stuff is over a century old, having kept/rebuilt the interior to the best of their knowledge, you can really connect to how people, or at least Victor Horta, must have worked and lived.

Getting there

It's a short walk from the Horta metro station to get to the museum. The two hotels Hôtel Solvay and Hôtel Tassel are also very near.