50. Résidence Palace

The Résidence Palace, Brussels’ first luxury apartment complex, was designed by the Swiss architect Michel Polak in the 1920s in the Art Deco style. It was intended to be a veritable city within a city and featured restaurants, a theatre, a magnificent swimming pool (which would be open to visitors), a gym, a hairdresser’s, a bank, a post office, as well as all manner of shops and personalised services, to meet the needs of the members of the upper middle class and the aristocracy who lived there. Having failed to achieve the success hoped for, the building was subsequently purchased by the Belgian State and converted into an administrative complex: it currently houses an international press centre.