Théâtre de Liège

Guide : You stand at the centre of the stage, in the performer's place. Facing you, the 558-seat tiered seating of the Salle de la Grande Main draws an open hand that spares the listed walls of 1939 and seems to levitate, anchored at the front and damped at the rear. Overhead, the stagehouse and its technical battens; in the distance, the control box opening onto the auditorium. A vantage rarely offered to the public, conceived by Pierre Hebbelinck and Pierre de Wit inside the former Société libre d'Émulation, founded in 1779 by Velbrück, burned in 1914 and reopened as a theatre in 2013. What would you like to explore: the hand of the tiered seating, the Hebbelinck renovation, or what this vantage changes?

Guide : You are seated in the tiered seating, facing the empty stage. On the left, two stacked side boxes — balustrades, pilasters, arches, a gilded crown — are the neoclassical walls of 1939 by Julien Koenig, listed since 1998 and preserved as they were. On the right and underfoot, the contemporary 558-seat open-hand tier, designed by Pierre Hebbelinck and Pierre de Wit to spare precisely those historic walls. A single image, two periods in dialogue, and at the centre an 18 × 21-metre stage ready for performance. What would you like to explore: Koenig's listed boxes, the renovation gesture, or the life of the hall?

Guide : Under a flock of 2,001 paper-folded birds, you stand at the heart of the neoclassical hall of the Théâtre de Liège. This is Ornis, the installation Belgian designer Charles Kaisin created to open the 2016-2017 season, inaugurated on 11 September 2016 — fifteen years after the New York attacks. Underfoot, the black-and-white marble checkerboard and the double staircase belong to the former Émulation rebuilt in 1939 by Julien Koenig, restored in 2013 by the Hebbelinck studio. The blurred visitors tell of the long exposure, the frozen birds tell of suspended flight. What would you like to explore: Ornis, Charles Kaisin, or the hall that hosts them?

Guide : You stand in the contemporary reception area of the Théâtre de Liège. Above, pale oak slats run in gentle curves: the signature of the Hebbelinck studio. Ahead, through the glass screen, Julien Koenig's hall with its black-and-white marble checkerboard. Two architectures facing each other through glass, without touching. What would you like to explore: the choice of wood, the dialogue between the two periods, or how this entrance announces what the building has in store?

Guide : You stand at the foot of the grand staircase rising to the mezzanine. Above you, a glass-and-iron skylight pours daylight onto the oak treads and the worked wrought-iron handrail. Everything in stone, iron or carved wood dates from Julien Koenig's reconstruction of 1939, listed since 1998 and cleaned by Hebbelinck in 2013; the pale-oak corridors, left and right, are the studio's contemporary gesture. Below, through the opening, the black-and-white checkerboard of the hall reappears. What would you like to explore: the zenith skylight, the wrought iron, or the seam between the two periods?