There is a house...

Jean-Marie Binst
© Agenda Magazine
06/10/2012
(© Marie-Françoise Plissart)

At the start of the year the legendary maison de rendez-vous (house of assignation) Le Berger reopened after extensive renovations. Maybe you don’t have the nerve to book a room there, but you can still feast your eyes on a new book packed with racy anecdotes, bizarre tales, and photographs by Marie-Françoise Plissart.
BOOK | Le Berger. Souvenirs d’une maison de rendez-vous ●●●
Isabelle Léonard & Marie-Françoise Plissart (photos)
, Les Impressions Nouvelles, FR & EN, 80 p., €19,50

After the renovations, the old-fashioned Le Berger hotel in Herdersstraat/rue du Berger is no longer a secret meeting place for lovers. With improved facilities and echoes of the art deco decoration and romantic accessories of the past, the day-and-night establishment once more exudes much of its old charm. The promotional material talks of an adventurous, art-loving public. A small piano bar and a new restaurant aim to make it a favourite with lovers once again. From 1935 to 2009 it was known for its great discretion, with 
two lifts bypassing each other for those entering and leaving.
Isabelle Léonard, who campaigned to save the then “decrepit” hotel, has written the history of the establishment. Her account has been published in a special, de luxe edition, which is richly illustrated with titillating photographs from the past and new images (from before and after the restoration) by the Brussels photographer Marie-Françoise Plissart.
Léonard interviewed the owners, manager Fredy Martens (now 88), and the regular maid, a personne stable who saw all but said nothing, for her book; Plissart’s atmospheric photographs are interspersed with the juicy stories. A photograph of a shower curtain with flowers, a room with mirrors around the bath, the warm light through a lampshade next to a velvet-upholstered armchair – each says enough, without even a single bare shoulder on view.

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