Liège-Guillemins station

An arrival that becomes a discovery

At Liège-Guillemins, stepping off the train can already begin your visit. The great white roof turns everyday infrastructure into a landscape: curves, repeated elements and light encourage you to look up. Designed by Santiago Calatrava, the current station opened in September 2009. Steel and glass form an open architecture whose shapes change with the day's light. That transparency connects the building with its urban setting. The station presented by Liège tourism.

Several stations before this one

Today's building is not the first Guillemins station. TrainWorld's dossiers describe successive installations: temporary 19th-century accommodation, a monumental station, a post-war modernist version and then the contemporary project. The 1905 postcard reproduced here shows one earlier stage. It therefore depicts neither an imaginary design nor the present station in another style. TrainWorld's historical dossier.

With high-speed rail, the challenge was no longer merely constructing an imposing façade. Routes, platforms and connections needed rethinking. TrainWorld explains that Calatrava was selected in 1996 after an international competition. His structure favours openness rather than a traditional façade clearly separating monument from city. The transformation told by TrainWorld.

A detail connecting future and past

The Guillemins name seems very old beside this futuristic architecture. With good reason: local tourism connects it to the Williamites, a religious order once present in the neighbourhood. A station can change silhouette several times while keeping a name recalling a far more distant period. The district thus preserves a pre-railway memory that curves of glass and steel do not immediately suggest. The name connects successive buildings to a longer history.

From monumental station to open station

The 1905 postcard documents the clock and volumes of the old structure, while the June 2021 photograph shows the contemporary structure's openness. The two images are not taken from the same viewpoint; they show change, not an architectural survey that can be overlaid.

The station remains above all a place of travel. Photograph from permitted spaces without obstructing movement or approaching tracks. Plan journeys, access, connections and assistance needs on the SNCB page; timetables, works and services may change. For onward travel to neighbourhoods and museums, also consult local tourism routes. Official Liège-Guillemins services and access.

Photos and credits

Photo 1 — Today's Liège-Guillemins station seen from rue Mandeville on 12 June 2021. Hoebele · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source.

Photo 2 — Archive: postcard of the former Guillemins station in 1905, before the modernist and contemporary buildings. Postcard author unidentified; digitisation shared by Claude Warzée · Public domain · Source.