The Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries (French: Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert, Dutch: Koninklijke Sint-Hubertusgalerijen) is an ensemble of three glazed shopping arcades in central Brussels, Belgium. It consists of the Galerie du Roi or Koningsgalerij (“King’s Gallery”), the Galerie de la Reine or Koninginnegalerij (“Queen’s Gallery”) and the Galerie des Princes or Prinsengalerij (“Princes’ Gallery”). The galleries were designed and built by the architect Jean-Pierre Cluysenaer between 1846 and 1847, and precede other famous 19th-century European shopping arcades, such as the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan and The Passage in Saint Petersburg. Like them, they have twin regular facades with distant origins in Vasari‘s long narrow street-like courtyard of the Uffizi in Florence, with glazed arched shopfronts separated by pilasters and two upper floors, all in an ItalianateCinquecento style, under an arched glass-paned roof with a delicate cast-iron framework. The complex was designated a historic monument in 1986. read more…
