In 1905, my great-great-grandfather Adolphe Stoclet and his wife, Suzanne, commissioned Josef Hoffmann, the avant-garde architect and a leading figure of the Vienna Secession, to design a house for them in Brussels. By 1911, the building was complete—a geometric masterpiece that defied the Art Nouveau norms of the time and predicted the Art Deco and early modernist movements that would follow. To the world, it was Le Palais Stoclet. To my family, it was home.
While I’ve only ever been a visitor there—my branch of the family lost ownership in the 1950s—family gatherings have always been filled with stories of Le Palais Stoclet. My father, Eric, remembers Sunday lunches and playtime in the sprawling gardens as a child. My grandfather Philippe would tell us how his school-mates were forever teasing him for living in a marble house. The family always hated the word “palace” being used to describe our home.
