The city of Brussels confirmed its plan to turn the current stock exchange building in the capital’s Anspach Avenue into a beer museum in 2014. “We want to give the building back to the public and turn it into an attraction that will create a lively neighbourhood and increase the tourist potential of this part of the city,” mayor Freddy Thielemans PS said yesterday. The city confirmed that it is currently looking into various possible new uses for the stock exchange building; one of them being a beer museum. To prepare the public to the new purpose of the building the Federation of Belgian Beer Brewers will be staging part of its annual beer weekend early in September at the stock exchange building. The project, the Belgian Beer Temple, is set to cost at least 15 million euros, with 70% of the financing coming from the Brussels Region, the City of Brussels and the Federation of Brewers. Unlike the Netherlands with their Heineken Experience, Belgium only has a number of small beer museums. If one considers the huge role of beer in the identity of the country, the notion of a beer museum makes perfect sense and both the Flemish tourist organisation Flanders Tourist Office and Visit Brussels back the project as an excellent tourist attraction.

“A large museum such as this will help us focus our attention on beer,” says Catherine Dardenne, culture and leisure manager at Visit Brussels. This sentiment is shared by Flanders Tourist Office, with their spokesman Stef Gits saying, “It’s about the beer experience in particular. The fact that we have a special glass for every beer, with artisanal breweries tucked away all over the place is extremely charming for our Dutch visitors. Beer is a science in which we excel, and it could be perfectly showcased in a museum like this one. We feel the stock exchange is a prime location, even though 65% of all Belgian beer is brewed in Flanders”. It’s hard to estimate the number of tourists that will visit the location. “I would like to think that a well-designed Belgian Beer Temple will attract as many tourists as the Magritte Museum,” says Dardenne. The Magritte museum currently attracts at least 400,000 visitors a year.

One of the key questions asked is how much freedom the initiators will have with the  refurbishment, as the stock exchange building is a protected monument, with even the surrounding area out of bounds for developers as a city landscape. City architect Olivier Bastin will commission the launch of an a architectural contest. Says Bastin: “At present there is a gap in between the Grande Place and the Anspach Avenue. This project will allow us to restore the dynamic between them.”