Africa Palace

Africa Palace
Afrikapaleis (Dutch) Palais d'Afrique (French)
Front view of the Africa Palace
Former names	Palace of the Colonies
Alternative names	Palace of Africa
General information
Type	Palace
Architectural style	Neoclassical
Town or city	Tervuren, Flemish Brabant
Country	Belgium
Coordinates	50°49′43″N 4°30′55″E
Completed	1897 (1897)

The Africa Palace or Palace of Africa (Template:Lang-nl, Template:Lang-fr or Palais de l'Afrique) is a neoclassical palace in Tervuren in Flemish Brabant, Belgium, just outside Brussels. It was originally built in 1897 by order of King Leopold II to house the colonial section of the 1897 International Exposition. Nowadays, it is part of the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA), and houses offices, storage rooms, classrooms and a reception hall. It was formerly called the Palace of the Colonies (Template:Lang-nl or Paleis der Koloniën, Template:Lang-fr) until 2018.

History

International Exposition (1897)

The Palace of the Colonies was built in 1897 by order of King Leopold II to plans by the French architect Alfred-Philibert Aldrophe to host the first Congo Exhibition (colonial section of the 1897 International Exposition). In the main hall, known as the Hall of the Great Cultures (Template:Lang-fr), the architect and decorator Georges Hobé designed a distinctive wooden Art Nouveau structure to evoke a Congolese forest, using Bilinga wood, an African tree. The exhibition displayed ethnographic objects, stuffed animals and Congolese export products (e.g. coffee, cacao and tobacco). In the classical gardens, designed by the French landscape architect Elie Lainé, a temporary "human zoo"—a copy of an African village—was built, in which 60 Congolese people lived for the duration of the exhibition. Seven of them, however, did not survive their forced stay in Belgium.

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  Poster for the colonial section of the 1897 International Exposition
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  Plan of the colonial section of the 1897 World's Fair in Tervuren
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  Wooden structure by Georges Hobé in the Hall of the Great Cultures during the exhibition
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  The 'Congolese Village' human zoo during the exhibition

Later history

In 1898, the building became the first Museum of the Congo (Template:Lang-fr, Template:Lang-nl), a museum and a scientific institution for the dissemination of colonial propaganda and support for colonial activities of Belgium. Named the Museum of the Belgian Congo (Template:Lang-fr, Template:Lang-nl), it moved to a new building nearby in 1910, where the institution is still located under the name AfricaMuseum. During the renovation of the museum in 2018, the Palace of the Colonies was renamed the Africa Palace.

Description

Structure

The palace consists of a rectangular central wing with seven bays and two square side wings with three bays each (to which must be added two modern red brick wings located to the northeast and southeast). Its facades have a polychromy resulting from the combination of blue stone and white stone, reinforced by the white color of the woodwork. The building, preceded by a staircase lined with statues of Egyptian sphinxes and a paved esplanade, is surmounted over its entire length by a smooth entablature decorated with drop triglyphs, which supports a strongly projecting cornice surmounted by a balustrade.

Central wing

The central wing of seven bays is dominated by a projecting central body, preceded by a staircase and bordered by flat bosses with cross-lined lines. This central body has three bays delimited by columns of colossal order surmounted by Ionic capitals embellished with garlands. These columns support the entablature and a large triangular pediment. The central body is extended by four bays (two on the left and two on the right) of similar structure, the columns being replaced by flat pilasters. At the level of these seven bays, the ground floor is pierced by large French windows with semi-circular transom windows surmounted by a key with acanthus leaves and spandrels adorned with laurel leaves, while the upstairs is pierced with rectangular windows with braces.

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  Central wing
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  Columns of the central wing
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  Transom surmounted by a key with acanthus leaves and spandrels decorated with laurel leaves

Side wings

The neoclassical side wings, with a square plan of three bays out of three, present a rather different structure. If we find there the flat bosses with cross lines, the pilasters with Ionic capitals, the entablature, the projecting cornice and the balustrade, the openings are on the other hand totally different. The central bay is pierced by a small door surmounted by an enormous arched window with projecting transoms, molded arch and blue stone arch key whose spandrels are stamped with the monogram of Leopold II consisting of two letters L arranged symmetrically. The side bays, for their part, are decorated, on the ground floor, with an arched niche and, on the first floor, with a smooth oval cartouche surrounded by a garland of laurel and ribbons.

See also

• Neoclassical architecture in Belgium
• Belgium in "the long nineteenth century"