Palace of Justice Brussels 2026: scaffolding removed, full portrait

Par Gabriel Goldberg 8 July 2026 8 min read

It has stood for 143 years, crushing the Brussels skyline with its blond stone mass. For decades, locals looked at it sideways — a giant wrapped in scaffolding since 1984, a whole generation who had never seen its bare façade. Then, in the summer of 2026, part of the veil came down. The main entrance of the Palace of Justice of Brussels , freed from its casing, reappeared in the light. It is magnificent. And it reminds us of a truth we had almost forgotten: this is the largest building erected in the 19th century on the planet. An outsized, out-of-scale object, still today one of the vastest cut-stone edifices in the world. Here is the most up-to-date portrait of this colossus. July 2026: the monumental entrance of the Palace of Justice, freed from part of its historic scaffolding. Photo: Metis Maven. A giant rediscovered in the summer of 2026 For more than forty years, the Palace's main entrance was invisible. Brusselers born after 1984 knew it only as a lattice of tubes and tarpaulins. On 16 October 2023, the Régie des Bâtiments launched the first phase of the real façade restoration: the Poelaert peristyle, the honour staircase and the courtyard of honour. In late June 2026, part of that casing came down — and the central porch, its cyclopean colonnades, its pediment and the bust of Minerva-Athena carved by Joseph Ducaju emerged into daylight. The shock is real: the stone is blond, chiselled, almost intact. What the city had reduced to a joke — "it will never be finished"…