Hotel Le Plaza Brussels

Boulevard Adolphe Max runs from Place De Brouckère to Place Rogier through the centre of Brussels, and halfway along it a long stone façade with a mansard roof fills most of a block. Hotel Le Plaza Brussels opened there in 1930, the year of Belgium's centenary and of the universal exhibition in Antwerp and Liège, built by the family who had admired the George V in Paris and wanted its equal at home. The hotel is one of a handful in Brussels that have kept the plan and the rooms they opened with.

History

The architect was Michel Polak, the Swiss-born designer of the Résidence Palace in the European quarter, and he gave the Plaza a steel frame behind a classical front. The hotel opened in 1930 with salons decorated in the Louis XVI manner and a theatre, the Théâtre Le Plaza, that showed films and staged revues for the city. In the 1930s and after the war it was the Brussels address of visiting heads of state and performers. Trade declined with the boulevard, and in 1976 the hotel closed. It stayed shut for two decades, its interiors dormant, until a restoration that reopened it in 1996 as a five-star hotel. The theatre was restored with it rather than demolished, which is why the Plaza can offer a room no other hotel in the city has.

Architecture and design

Polak's façade is of pale stone with a rusticated base, regular bays, wrought-iron balconies and a steep mansard roof. The lobby and the salons on the ground floor are in white and gold, with panelling, mirrors and chandeliers in the Louis XVI style of the original decoration. The theatre is the surprise: a hall in a Hispano-Moorish manner, with horseshoe arches, a painted sky of a ceiling and boxes around a floor that can be set for dinner or for a dance. The restoration of the 1990s reinstated the original colour schemes where they could be traced.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has about 190 rooms and suites across its upper floors, large by Brussels standards because the 1930 plan allowed for them. Decoration is traditional, with carpets, fabrics in pale tones, marble bathrooms and tall windows onto the boulevard or the quieter courtyard side. The suites on the upper floors, some with terraces under the mansard, are the ones with views over the roofs to the old town.

Dining

The restaurant, under a glass roof on the ground floor, serves French and Belgian cooking and the hotel's breakfast; the bar off the lobby serves lighter dishes and cocktails through the day. The hotel is known for its breakfast, which takes advantage of the Belgian pâtisserie and chocolate trade on its doorstep.

Wellness

The hotel has a fitness room but no spa or pool.

Weddings and events

The Théâtre Le Plaza is the principal event room, taking several hundred guests for a gala dinner, a fashion show or a wedding reception under its painted sky. The Louis XVI salons on the ground floor hold smaller receptions and meetings, and a set of boardrooms serves the business of the European institutions. The Plaza is one of the most used hotels in Brussels for conferences because the theatre doubles as a plenary hall.

Location

The hotel stands between Place Rogier and Place De Brouckère, with the Rue Neuve shopping street parallel behind it and the Grand-Place about ten minutes on foot. Brussels-North station is five minutes away and Brussels-Central ten; Brussels Airport at Zaventem is 12 kilometres east, with a train every quarter of an hour from the North station. Among the luxury hotels in Brussels, the Plaza is the one with a theatre of its own.