Gare Maritime in Brussels
- Frank Kaltenbach
Tour & Taxis, a 37 hectare site near the financial centre of Brussels, was one of Europe’s largest transshipment stations, well into the 1980s. Due to the introduction of the European Single Market in 1990 customs clearance was no longer required and the site was offered for sale. For many years, it has been vacant and deteriorating. In 2014 a single investor began transforming the storage halls and customs buildings into a green quarter for the city, step by step, complete with urban villas, event halls, restaurants, market places and a large park. The renovation of the largest building, the hall of the freight train station Gare Maritime, erected in 1902, was completed in 2020. 45,000 m² of usable area for modern office workplaces, shops and restaurants were created beneath the seven roof structures of the hall, where, in the past, goods from all over the world had been repacked, weighed and reloaded from freight cars onto horse-drawn vehicles and trucks.
