Terraced art nouveau houses with sgraffito panels and iron balconies, including Victor Horta's own house, used as a Paris apartment in The Danish Girl.
What Saint-Gilles looks like
Streets around climb toward the , lined with four and five storey terraced houses over ground floor shops. Many facades keep their original brick or painted plaster, with bay windows, wrought iron balconies and sgraffito panels worked into the upper storeys.
has some of the clearest examples, red brick fronts with sgraffito wall panels and iron balcony rails repeating from one house to the next. Near the , plainer nineteenth century terraces stand beside the art nouveau houses, painted cream and stone with dark green bay windows over ground floor storefronts.
The keeps its stair hall largely as built. Green iron columns rise to vine patterned ironwork under a stained glass skylight, with sgraffito covering the walls around it. The Municipal Hall itself was built between 1900 and 1904, its stone front closer in scale to a chateau than a local town hall, with a clock tower and gilded roof figures.
on the Parvis mixes neoclassical, art nouveau and art deco details across its corner facade. A premetro stop sits underneath the square, with tram tracks crossing the paving above it.
Shot in Saint-Gilles
For The Danish Girl, the production used the Horta Museum's stair hall as Hans Axgil's Paris apartment, played by Matthias Schoenaerts. Gerda climbs the same stairs to reach him there.
The Danish Girl, 2015
The Horta Museum
Played Hans Axgil's apartment, Paris, France, 1920s
The stair hall keeps Horta's own green iron columns and vine patterned ironwork, unchanged since the house became a museum. The film crosses the same stairs and landing for the scene, with the sgraffito walls and stained glass skylight visible around the actors. Street View
What Saint-Gilles can double for
Auteuil in Paris, France
The Danish Girl used the Horta Museum's stair hall as Hans Axgil's Paris apartment. Auteuil, in Paris' 16th arrondissement, has Hector Guimard's own apartment buildings on similarly narrow terraced streets. Guimard's ironwork runs to a greener bronze than Horta's darker iron. Auteuil's streets also read wider on camera, so a tight frame on one facade holds the match best. Try searching Guimard apartment buildings now.
Alberta iela in Riga, Latvia
Riga's Alberta iela has the same turn of the century scale as Saint-Gilles, an Art Nouveau apartment block street with bay fronts and decorative ironwork. Its plasterwork runs more sculptural and ornamented than Brussels sgraffito, reading as a showier, more overtly decorated Art Nouveau district. Alberta iela's facades carry carved faces and figures that Saint-Gilles does not, so wider shots need care to avoid that giveaway; tighter frames on plain ironwork and bay windows travel better. Try searching Art Nouveau apartment block now.
