Place Rogier in Brussels is not just any square. Once called the Place des Nations and a gateway to the former North Station, it welcomed the first cars and electric trams amidst stately hotels with melodious names. The square breathed to the rhythm of the metropolis and managed to reconcile the bustle of city life with a human scale.

The construction of the North-South connection shunted the North Station a few hundred metres further along, in the process creating space for a square with international ambitions. When the beautiful 117-metre-high international Rogier Centre, with its offices, housing, theatre and sky bar, was demolished on a sad morning in 2001, Brussels lost yet another piece of its metropolitan identity.