Before automated lines, fast trains and modern tunnels, Brussels already had an underground station. And it’s still there. Its name: Lemonnier station, a pioneer of the STIB network and a witness to the capital’s urban history.
Lemonnier, STIB’s underground cradle
The oldest station in the Brussels network is not Schuman or De Brouckère, but Lemonnier. Inaugurated in 1957, this underground station was built long before the metro opened. At the time, Brussels was getting ready to host Expo 58, and the city wanted to ease traffic congestion at the crossroads between the center and the Gare du Midi. So a streetcar tunnel was built, linking north and south. This visionary pre-metro, installed under the boulevard, saw Lemonnier emerge as a strategic hub for urban mobility. It was a technical and symbolic milestone: the first underground station ever built in the capital.
The pre-métro, an avant-garde idea
In the 1950s, the metro was still a distant project. But Brussels was ahead of the game with its hybrid pre-metro system, a network of streetcars running underground, like a light rail system. Lemonnier is part of this pioneering model, with platforms designed for streetcars and a structure designed to absorb growing traffic. Other stations followed, including Parc, Anneessens and Rogier. This network became the backbone of the future north-south line.
From pre-metro to metro: the birth of a network
It wasn’t until 1976 that the STIB inaugurated its first real metro, linking De Brouckère to Tomberg. The gradual transformation of the pre-metro into a metro continued over the following decades, with the extension of lines and the modernization of infrastructure. Today, the STIB manages a dense network. Four metro lines, some twenty streetcar lines and dozens of buses. All criss-crossing the city over 600 km. But at the heart of this underground history, Lemonnier remains the starting point, the founding station – a discreet witness to a time when Brussels was already inventing its future.