City Hall · La Violette

Guide : Here Liège's municipal power stages itself beneath a moral ceiling: Jean Riga's Three Virtues, surrounded by stucco, gilding, woodwork and allegories by Louis Counet. The room is beautiful, but above all it states a demand: to govern is to make visible what one claims to defend. Which virtue would you look for first above a political assembly?

Guide : Before entering the rooms of power, you cross this hall of waiting and passage. Jean Hans's Atlantes support the balcony, Jean Del Cour's busts watch above the doors, and Adelin Salle's Queen Astrid recalls a moment from 1935 turned civic memory. What does a vestibule say when it holds so much history?

Guide : In her dark niche, Queen Astrid appears in white marble, holding Prince Albert toward the people of Liège. Adelin Salle does not only sculpt a sovereign: he fixes the memory of La Violette's balcony on 7 July 1935, only weeks before Astrid's death. Is this a royal portrait, or already an image of mourning?