Gems of the squares district

At the end of the nineteenth century, the Maelbeek valley offered a unique setting for the development of a new residential district. Its squares, water features, fountains and tree-lined avenues attracted wealthy middle-class residents who commissioned the most talented architects of the period to design their homes. The district became a veritable laboratory of late nineteenth-century architecture, with facades in a wide variety of styles, from unfettered Eclecticism to Art Nouveau, then at its zenith.