Victor Hugo Walk in Brussels - Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert

The next stop of the walk takes you to the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert. According to Wikipedia,

The Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert (French) or Koninklijke Sint-Hubertusgalerijen (Dutch) is a glazed shopping arcade in Brussels that preceded other famous 19th-century shopping arcades such as the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan and The Passage in St Petersburg. Like them it has twin regular façades with distant origins in Vasari‘s long narrow street-like courtyard of the Uffizi, Florence, with glazed arcaded shopfronts separated bypilasters and two upper floors, all in an Italianate Cinquecento style, under an arched glass-paned roof with a delicate cast-iron framework. The gallery consists of two major sections, each more than 100 meters in length (respectively called Galerie du Roi / Koningsgalerij, meaning King’s Gallery, and Galerie de la Reine / Koninginnegalerij, meaning Queen’s Gallery), and a smaller side gallery (Galerie des Princes / Prinsengalerij, meaning Gallery of the Princes). The main sections (King and Queen’s Gallery) are separated by a colonnade at the point where the Rue des Bouchers / Beenhouwersstraat crosses the gallery complex.

The construction of the galleries started in 1864 and lasted for 18 months. Usually The Viking and I avoid touristic places, but this one deserves to be an exception! There are a couple of gems here that tend to be overlooked.

At number 30 in the Galerie de la Reine there is a pub, called Taverne du Passage. In the 19th century a lot of French exiles – Victor Hugo wasn’t the only one – came at this address, but then it housed the “Cercle Artistic et Littéraire” (Artistic and Literary Circle).

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