A completely anonymous, suburban yellow-brick house: that's the façade of the Musée Magritte, and the façade that René Magritte, Belgium's most famous surrealist artist, showed the outside world. This museum in Jette occupies the house where Magritte and his wife Georgette lived from 1930 to 1954. Its appeal comes from its incredibly ordinary nature. It's odd to think the man responsible for some of the 20th century's most enduring images spent 24 years of his life in this bourgeois backstreet.
The museum opened in 1999 as the private initiative of a friend of the widow Magritte. With scandalously little support from the Belgian state, the curators assembled hundreds of original items - from Magritte's passport to paintings, photos, furniture and a pipe. Not everything's original - the piano in the salon is a copy - but there's more than enough to give an inkling into Magritte's private world. And fans will delight in discovering details of the house that Magritte faithfully reproduced in dozens of his famous paintings (many of which can be seen at the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts).
