Hôtel Cardon

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Hôtel Cardon occupies No. 63 quai au Bois à Brûler, in the Sainte-Catherine district of the Brussels Pentagon, on the edge of the former Bassin des Marchands, dug in 1560–1561 and part of the city's inner port. The plot brings together three successive volumes: a four-storey townhouse on a trapezoidal plan facing the street, a rear annexe of irregular plan, and a linking wing lit by an inner courtyard, now covered by a reinforced concrete slab. The cellars, extending beneath the whole complex, preserve traces of two medieval plots separated by a thick brick wall; one of them is covered by a low vault running perpendicular to the street. The present building results from the remodelling, around 1840, of an 18th-century commercial house, itself built on the site of two older houses. A third storey was added in 1882, and the rear annexe, initially limited to one level, received two additional storeys during the 19th century. The neoclassical street façade lines up regular rectangular openings; the rear façade is more austere. The name of the house recalls the decorative painter and collector Charles-Léon Cardon (1850–1920), a pupil and then collaborator of the architect Alphonse Balat, who owned the building and carried out its interior decoration himself. This decoration combines Neo-Pompeian, Neo-Rococo (Régence) and Flemish Neo-Renaissance registers: a hall and staircase with a wrought-iron balustrade, an antechamber with a fully painted beamed ceiling, and salons with marble fireplaces and moulded ceilings. On the principal floor, the great salon retains a painted ceiling of female figures and putti holding a square and compasses, a Masonic allusion, as well as an 18th-century marble fireplace; the rear salon bears a painted garland inspired by Pompeii. The annexe served as a storeroom and exhibition space for Cardon's collection (Flemish Primitives, English painting, Rubens, Van Dyck, sculptures), with, on the second floor, a room lit from above beneath an ornate ceiling inspired by 17th-century Flemish art. Carefully restored in the 1980s and divided into apartments, the building at No. 63 is listed in its entirety as a monument by decree of the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region dated 26 June 2003, the procedure having been opened on 11 July 2002; a protection zone surrounds it.