Gare de Liège-Guillemins

The structure of the main railway station of Liege-Guillemins was designed by Santiago Calatrava, the famous spanish architect from Valencia (all Spanish Erasmus students in Liege mention that the architect of the train station is from Spain every time you talk to them... and there are always so many Spanish Erasmus students around... ). This new station was opened in 2009 and the enormous steel structure became directly a symbol of the city. Most of the people that travel to Liege for the first time, go there by train (good connection with Brussels airports or other Belgian cities) and this futuristic structure makes your first impression of the city unforgettable. You will stay around 5 to 10 minutes with head up while admiring one of the new "wonders of the modern world" and directly will take your camera or phone to capture it from different angles. I don't exaggerate if I say that this structure is the most photographed monument of Liege. When at first we saw it from distance, my friend told me that this structure reminded him of one of those giant figures in Japanese cartoons :)

Many local people complained when this structure was built as it costed a lot of money (if you have some imagination you can literally see the money only by looking at it... ) and due to the many openings, it isn't that much energy efficient. In other words during winter season you may feel the cold wind in the station coming from the ocean just as you were outside on the streets. Although in terms of functionality, the idea to build a futuristic structure like this for railway station is not questionable, as a tourist if you visit Liege, you surely have to see it!

Inside the building you will find all necessary services of a railway station: ticket office for trains, a nice bar, a small market (with quite long opening hours! ) but also a shop to buy urban transport tickets for the city. Close to it there is also a nice arch bridge and in front of the station a beautiful square finished in 2014. If you are interested in sci-fi movies, you can see the structure even in the "Guardians of the Galaxy" (2014), in which it appears several times in "Xandar".