Art Of The Day Weekly

Letter from Liège: welcome to the swimming-pool

LIÈGE - A superb Art Deco pool was transformed into a museum in Roubaix, intelligently keeping its name (La Piscine), therefore its history. Here is a second one to add to the list, in Liège (Belgium). It is from a slightly later period and symbolizes that spirit of resistance of Liège, for which the French in 1914, in recognition for the local heroism that slowed down the Kaiser’s troops, renamed the famous “Viennese coffee” the “café liégeois”. The pool was imagined in 1936 by municipal councillor Georges Truffaut (1901-1942) , who was to be a hero in the war. The pool was inaugurated in 1939 (with a bomb shelter), and welcomed millions of users among which native son Simenon. It was decommissioned in 2000 and threatened with being destroyed. An association, Les Territoires de la Mémoire, with a petition signed by 200,000 persons, the equivalent of the town’s population, saved it. It has been restored in a sober manner for a budget of €20 million. After being inaugurated in January 2014, its first exhibition (see here-under) cheekily concerns a bleak episode of the year 1939.
• The former Bains et Thermes de la Sauvenière, by architect Georges Dedoyard, were renamed La Cité Miroir.

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