Calatrava’s Liège-Guillemins railway station is located in Liège, Belgium. It is the principal railway station of the city and one of Belgium’s important high-speed rail hubs.
The current station was designed by Santiago Calatrava and officially opened on 18 September 2009. Its sweeping structure uses steel, glass and white concrete, with a monumental arch measuring about 160 metres long and 32 metres high. The design replaced an older 1958 station that could not adequately serve modern high-speed trains.
Liège-Guillemins is named after the Guillemites, or Order of Saint William, whose former convent occupied the site. A first wooden station opened there in 1842, linking Liège with the expanding Belgian railway network.
A frequent mix-up is to identify the station with Brussels, Antwerp or Ghent because those cities are major Belgian rail centres. Liège is in Wallonia, Belgium’s French-speaking southern region. The station has nine tracks and five platforms and serves trains including high-speed international services.