Liège-Guillemins railway station

Liège-Guillemins train station

The station was founded in 1863 and has been renovated several times. In 1905, the World Exhibition in Liège prompted a renovation, The Liège-Guillemins station is one of the busiest stations in Wallonia. With the trains that stop there you can easily reach Germany, France, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The current Liège-Guillemins station was designed by the Catalan architect Santiago Calatrava.

The new station was inaugurated in 2009 after 10 years of bower in an industrial and modern style. It now attracts many tourists and has become a symbol of the city and the most photographed monument in Liège.
Calatrava has ensured that the large areas of the station are naturally illuminated, using glass and metal. A square has also been created in front of the entrance, restoring the entire Guillemins district, with a car park and a pedestrian bridge giving direct access to the Médiacité shopping center.

From October 15, 2022 to June 15, 2024, at the initiative of the Uhoda group, which carried out this project, the Liège-Guillemins Station is the support for a major artistic project: a monumental and temporary work by Daniel Buren, the one of the most recognized French artists on the international scene.

Designed in relation to the architecture of Santiago Calatrava, the work, entitled “As fallen from the sky, the colors in situ and in movement”, is deployed on all of the station’s glass roofs, through a play of colors. This monumental artistic project will be constantly moving according to the light of day, the times and the seasons. With this gesture, the artist transforms the station and invites the public to renew their view of this architecture, of the poetic possibilities of everyday life, and to discover unexpected experiences. “As if falling from the sky, the colors in situ and in movement” is based on the main vault and the two side caps of the station. Daniel

Buren likes to see his work as a “borrowing of the landscape”, taken from the Japanese expression “Shakkei”. For a defined period of time, the work of the artist and that of the architect form a whole. Borrowing what the work exists on and with. The checkerboard arrangement of colors allows visitors to simultaneously contemplate the evolution of the sky and that of the color projections. Allowing them to discover and understand the relationship between light and colored projection.

A total immersion in color (without leaving an empty tile) would, according to the artist, lose the meaning of his work. The horizontality of the structure makes the colored projection all the more visible. Unlike stained glass windows in churches which, due to their verticality, only cause minimal projections on the ground. The result is a play of strong contrasts that is both mobile thanks to the ever-changing projections and reflections, and stable thanks to the effect of the self-adhesive stickers on the roof. Deliberately spread over more than a year, the work will be constantly moving, punctuated by the four seasons. Thus radically transforming the building and allowing a renewal of the way we look at architecture while driving a new approach.

Grand Café de la Gare

You wouldn't expect it: a restaurant of this level in a train station. At the beginning of the restaurant there is a brasserie.
Those who love the classics are in for a treat: steak tartare, rognons de veau, blanquette de veau, anduillette, chicons au gratin and the inevitable boulets à la liegoise servis en cocotte. You sit comfortably in boxes and the service is perfect
Recommended for lunch or dinner or for a good glass of Belgian beer in the brasserie.

Museum zone of Liège-Guillemins station

Every year there is a spectacular exhibition in the museum zone of Liège-Guillemins station. Take a look at the current exhibition and be surprised.