On September 20, 1976, the people of Brussels stepped onto a real subway for the first time. Fifty years later, we ride it on autopilot, headphones on, without realizing that these tunnels took nearly a century to come to fruition. A book published this summer, written by two former STIB engineers, brings the archives back into the spotlight—and frankly, it was worth the wait !
A king’s idea that sat on the drawing board for 84 years
It was Leopold II who, as early as 1892, envisioned running trains beneath Brussels. The idea was grand, but it gathered dust. In 1926, plans for an “urban railway” were dusted off, but they too came to nothing. In 1957, the first underground section was completed with the Constitution Tunnel. It wasn’t until 1962, under Communications Minister Alfred Bertrand, that the project finally got off the ground, and then in 1969 that King Baudouin inaugurated the pre-metro. The actual metro, however, did not arrive until 1976: eleven kilometers, sixteen stations, between De Brouckère, Tomberg, and Beaulieu. Today, the network consists of four lines and about forty kilometers. It took eighty-four years to go from the initial idea to the first ticket.
How the Berlaymont transformed the entire network
Here’s the twist that no one ever mentions. The initial project favored a north-south route. Then, starting in 1963, the Berlaymont was built to house the European Communities—and priorities suddenly shifted to an east-west route. The direct consequence: Brussels’ first metro line initially served Auderghem, Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, and Woluwe-Saint-Pierre. Molenbeek and Anderlecht, meanwhile, would have to wait. This is the exact opposite of what happens in most major cities, where the metro starts in working-class neighborhoods. Beneath your feet, Brussels’ geography thus tells, above all, a story of European diplomacy.
The White Lady, a sawed-off padlock, and a song by Toots
There are still some amusing details. The workers had nicknamed the construction site dug beneath the Côte d’Or factory “the White Lady”: they were literally freezing there while the aroma of chocolate wafted through the tunnel. In 1974, a padlock left behind on the very first MX101 train forced technicians to saw it off on the spot, since they didn’t have a key. And for the 1976 inauguration, Toots Thielemans composed a piece simply titled *Metro*. The musician also lent his name to the Anneessens station in 2019. Want to dig deeper? The book *50 Years of the Brussels Metro*, by Christian Dochy and Thierry Duquenne, is available for €35 on weekends at the RétroShop of the Tram Museum on Avenue de Tervueren. And mark your calendars for September 20: to celebrate the anniversary, the STIB is opening the Jacques Brel depot to the public—on Car-Free Sunday.
