Around the town hall of #Schaerbeek is a real bouillabaisse, or rather a Hutsepot of architectural styles. A tale of fin de siècle boosterism, with a commune that had recently been quite rural fighting its neighbours in the tax-base war as the loot from empire rolled in.

Incomers acquiring plots on the square were forced to choose a façade for their new home from among the prize-winning entries in an 1896 public competition. These had to reflect the values of art "that the Renaissance spread among the civilized nations." First come, first served.

The result was that as cinemas, telephones and electricity were arriving in Brussels, a mainly francophone clientele was coopted into a an architectural cosplay based on the C16 Flemish renaissance, then in a hot war with art nouveau to define the national style. It won.

Architect Henri Van Massenhove and his German pal Guillaume Löw won most of the façade prizes with houses called stuff like In den Boogen & In de Haalve Man. They wrote a book (in French) about their collaboration in the Flemish renaissance style, called Les Maisons Modernes .

Meanwhile, behind the town hall and in the side streets, away from the municipality's golden-age cheese dreams... the white heat of art nouveau. Henri Jacobs, for himself in 1899. Today and when just built.

Rent a flat above a shop? I might, Jarvis if they're as cute as this art nouveau pair, also by Henri Jacobs and just outside the town hall's olde Flanders perimeter.

It's solid classical stodge for the 1899 girls school in the same side street just outside the Flanders zone. Henri Jacobs would go on to build spectacular art nouveau schools elsewhere in Schaerbeek but here the hutsepot of style is restricted to the lovely original sign.

Just opposite the girls school is the art deco back entrance to.. another school, built up against the border of Flandersland and into the fake-grotto garden wall of a Massenhove/Löw house. Hutsepot.

Which brings us to the centerpiece of Flemysshe Schaerbeek, the town hall. It's huge, you can probably see it from your window, wherever you're reading this. Number 2 on my list of unnecessarily large Brussels town halls ( Saint Gilles gets the prize there).

Inaugurated in 1887, it burned down in 1911 in suspicious circumstances. They just got the architect's son to build another one, because it matched the curtains, so to speak. So the art nouveau lads (if it was them, I'm not saying it was mind) wasted good petrol. Do visit. Ends.