Major Town Houses of the Architect Victor Horta (Brussels)

Art Nouveau broke into architecture in Brussels, and Victor Horta led the revolution. His four masterpiece town houses — the Tassel, Solvay and van Eetvelde residences, together with his own house and studio — dissolved the conventional 19th-century floor plan, drawing daylight deep inside through glass and iron and letting whiplash curves flow from structure into decoration. UNESCO inscribed the houses in 2000 as pioneering works of the style.