It’s no surprise that Santiago Calatrava would design a gigantic and futuristic train station. He’s Calatrava! Extravagance is what he does. What’s more curious, though, is why Mons, Belgium, would hire him the first place. Surely he presented sketches and models to the city elders, and yet they still nodded their heads and said, “Oui, this mammoth monstrosity is what we need! Mons is the 15th busiest station in all of Belgium, after all!”
Living in Valencia, we know the work of native son Santiago Calatrava all too well. His City of Arts and Sciences is Valencia’s most recognizable and well-known landmark, and we’ve seen other Calatrava buildings during our travels: in Oviedo, Tenerife, New York City, and Lisbon. His style is absolutely distinctive — gleaming white, ultra modern constructions that look like the skeleton of some fantastical space creature crashed to earth. There’s never any doubt you’re looking at one of his creations.
But I have to confess, the Gare de Mons might be the most puzzling of all his buildings. Not that it’s “bad” or anything… it’s a Calatrava, and it definitely looks cool! No, the problem here is one of scale. There is simply no imaginable reason for tiny Mons to have a train station of this size. It’s ridiculous. Just look up Mons on Google Earth, and see how the station, along with its tracks, stretches along the entire western side of the town, literally as long as the city itself.
And the station isn’t just big, but it was wildly expensive. Another calling card of Calatrava’s, is coming in way over budget, and way over schedule. This project, which was slated to cost the city €37 million, ended up with a price tag nearly 13 times higher. And instead of opening in 2015, as it was supposed to, the station wasn’t ready until late 2024.
We just happened to arrive in Mons on the Gare de Mon’s very first week of operation. We aren’t huge Calatrava groupies or anything, it was honestly a coincidence. But there were plenty of signs that, even with a delay of 9+ years, things had been rushed at the end: escalators and elevators weren’t working; there was just one (closed) shop in the whole, massive structure; and much of the building still seemed to be under construction.
It’s hard to imagine that anyone in Mons thinks that this train station turned out to be a good idea. And city leaders have admitted that the project was flawed, with outsized ambition, and shoddy management. But hey, Mons now has a Calatrava building! And that has to count for something.
From our Travel Blog.