Royal plans for BSB’s sports site Our history uncovered Every day we are blessed to come to a school with such a modern, purpose-built campus and state-of-the-art facilities. These facilities were of course upgraded in 2016 when the most ambitious project in the school’s 51-year history was realised with the building of the new swimming pool, gym, and sports hall. In addition to that, the revamping of the outdoor sports pitches in 2020 continued the school’s history of new building developments, technological investments, and improvements.
in the museum’s basement showed that the King also had plans at the time for the site on which our school now sits.
But did you know that the idea for our sports facilities was conceived over 200 years ago, long before the school itself was created?
“Many of the attractions and grand buildings of Brussels were located in the very centre of the city, such as the museum of Belgian history,” says Maarten Couttenier, an expert in history and politics at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. “But then Leopold had plans for expanding the city which started with the creation of the Parc du Cinquantenaire and continued with the avenues leading out of the city which he planned to use for urbanisation and the further expansion of Brussels.”
Back in 2014, the Museum of Central Africa uncovered a set of old plans that King Leopold II had for this site once he had completed his architectural development of Tervuren. Despite a questionable history internationally, the monarch known as The Builder King, certainly had a clear vision for Brussels and its surroundings.
After completing the long boulevard which reaches Tervuren from the outskirts of eastern Brussels, King Leopold wanted his builders to create a school close to the Colonial Palace. And not just any school but an École Mondiale, a world school, which would be a place of academic excellence and architectural grandeur.
It is often assumed that King Leopold’s architects, once they had completed their development of Avenue Tervuren, planned to finish their work by building the museum and the royal palace that neighbour BSB in the rolling parklands and forest of Tervuren. However, the historical records discovered
It is well-documented that BSB is located on the very site that the King had first identified for this but what the uncovered plans also revealed was that Leopold and his architects had planned to build the École Mondiale’s sports facilities on the exact spot that our state-of-the-art sports centre is now.
20 • The British School of Brussels
