The Autoworld is a car museum located in one of the buildings in the Parc du Cinquantenaire on the eastern edge of the European quarter. The park is primarily a leisure park and is dominated by a triumphal arch from the year 1905.
Again, there was no doubt that the Summit was held in the Autoworld because of the billboards - but I'll get back to the Summit later. There was a lot to see in the Autoworld, besides the Summit.
Even if I hadn't already told you what is inside the Autoworld, you would have guessed it easily because of its name. Yes, cars - and a lot of them. The cars in this museum span the time period from the end of the 19th century until about 1970's. To give you an idea how big the place is and how many cars there are, take a look on the following pictures. It shows the main hall, which I think is about half of the space occupied by the vehicles that I was able to see.
I won't be able to tell you what the cars on the pictures are, because I simply don't know. They were labelled in the Autoworld, but I did not have enough time to take notes, so I only have some pictures.
The Autoworld had all imaginable types of cars that existed, including sport cars.
Parts of the exhibition also showed the layout of an old car repair shop and a gas station, but I don't have any pictures of these. There were quite a few fire vehicles on display, but their area was not lit very well (because the Summit area did not reach that part of the Autoworld), so most of the pictures I took didn't come out very well. I only have one that isn't very blurry (it's only somewhat blurry), it was taken from the upper floor where the workshops were held.
If you are at least slightly interested in cars and if you make a trip to Brussels in the future, be sure not to miss the Autoworld. It's well worth it. And if you have some extra time, the building next to it in the Park hosts Cinquantenaire Museum, a part of the Royal Museums for Art and History. And the building next to that hosts the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and of Military History, and you can go up into the triumphal arch and have a very nice view of Brussels. Next time I am in Brussels, I will have to visit the arch.
My main interest in Brussels were neither cars nor art or armed forces, so we'll now switch back to the Summit. The next two pictures will nicely mark the transition between cars and conferencing!
Copyright notice: Text and images copyright by Michal Řeháček.