Just behind the Théâtre de la Monnaie, a stone’s throw from the Grand-Place, The Dominican occupies a choice location. It was also in this historic building that the exiled French painter Jacques-Louis David lived from 1815 to 1825.

The 150 rooms are arranged around an interior garden in the form of a cloister.

Brussels’ other new five-star hotel, the Be Manos, has deliberately chosen the total design concept in collaboration with numerous young designers and artists. Behind this exemplary restoration of a dilapidated old veterinary school from the 1920s, which was home to squatters, is the Poulgaras family, who already own the Manos Stéphanie and Manos Premier.

 

The plan to set up five minutes from the Gare du Midi station and Eurostar and Thalys terminus, in a district that is being renovated and returning from death’s door, is rather bold; in any event, visitors are only a fifteen-minute walk away from the Grand-Place.

With two predominating colours – black and white – the décor of the Be Manos adopts an ultra-contemporary style, not without reference to the pop aesthetic and the Seventies. In the rooms, the pure lines of the rattan wood furniture meet materials such as Chinese black shale, leather and wood as well as Perspex, stainless steel and opaline.

Photographer Carol Kohen has personalised each of the 60 rooms with 60 portraits of unknown but willing subjects. There is even an erotic floor where some of these amateur models have revealed a little more of themselves.

Glamour, paste, cowhide pouffes, glass bubble chandeliers, an orange psychedelic lounge nonetheless called the “Black Lounge”, a breakfast room painted bright apple green – everything to satisfy fans of design, architecture and unusual materials. This is Brussels’ first real boutique hotel where you can order everything you see – or almost.

 

Last surprise in a place that is full of them – the restaurant of the Be Manos serves traditional Belgian dishes rather than soulless modernist cuisine.