Royal Galleries of Saint-Hubert

Geschiedenis

The Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert or Koninklijke Sint-Hubertusgalerijen is a glazed shopping arcade in Brussels that preceded other famous 19th-century shopping arcades such as the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan and The Passage in St Petersburg. Like them it has twin regular façades with distant origins in Vasari's long narrow street-like courtyard of the Uffizi, Florence, with glazed arcaded shopfronts separated by pilasters and two upper floors, all in an Italianate Cinquecento style, under an arched glass-paned roof with a delicate cast-iron framework.ArchitectureThe gallery consists of two major sections, each more than 100 meters in length, and a smaller side gallery . The main sections are separated by a colonnade at the point where the Rue des Bouchers / Beenhouwersstraat crosses the gallery complex.At this point there is a discontinuity in the straight perspective of the gallery. This "bend" was introduced purposefully in order to make the long perspective of the gallery, with its repetition of arches, pilasters and windows, less tedious.