Bains de la Sauvenière, Cultural centre in a former bathhouse in Liège, Belgium
The Bains de la Sauvenière is a modernist "ocean liner" building on Boulevard de la Sauvenière, with a dark grey-brown facade, tall rectangular windows, a stepped parapet and a curved arch bearing the raised letters "RUSKOF CHESNUT" and "STUP". Its upper floor holds a hall nearly 80 metres long with two pools, once covered by a barrel vault of glass bricks from the Val-Saint-Lambert crystal works.
Liège had no municipal pool since 1919, so alderman Georges Truffaut pushed through the project in October 1936. Architect Georges Dedoyard won a competition with 49 entries; work ran from 1938 to 1941, delayed by World War II, and the baths opened in May 1942. Truffaut died before completion. The pools closed in 2001, the building was listed in 2005, and it reopened as La Cité Miroir on 14 January 2014.
Since 14 January 2014 the former pools have housed La Cité Miroir, a cultural and citizenship centre. The small pool's tiled floor is kept as an exhibit surface, while the large pool's basin became a performance hall. The name refers to the mirrors once used by swimmers to signal across the hall.
The main entrance is at 22 Place Xavier-Neujean, with a second entrance at 33-25 Boulevard de la Sauvenière; the ground floor once held a bus station, so both sides are reachable on foot. The building is a protected heritage site, and the former air-raid shelter in the basement is being restored for visits.
The air-raid shelter in the basement is divided into six circular rooms linked to each other and could hold 400 people, with changing rooms, showers, a first-aid post and an air-filtration system. It is the only air-raid shelter in Wallonia listed as protected heritage. In 2023 the Walloon heritage agency approved a project to restore half of it to its original state and fit out the other half for La Cité Miroir's activities.
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