Glimpse into Klimt's hidden dream world

Architect who helped create a Viennese whirl

Louise Baring goes behind the closed doors of a building in Brussels with an extraordinary artistic pedigree

Enter
the privately-owned Palais Stoclet in Brussels, and you will be hit by
a gust of warm air wafting down a beautiful corridor with black squares
stencilled on the walls.

The corridor leads to the main part of the vast house
and to a monumental frieze (6ft high by 50ft wide) embellished with
mosaics in gold and semi-precious jewels. Seen only by a handful of
people in the hundred years since it was made, the frieze is
unmistakably the work of Gustav Klimt, the great Viennese artist whose
portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer was sold last year to the cosmetics heir
Ronald Lauder for $135 million, making it the most expensive painting
ever sold.

The Palais Stoclet, designed by the
Viennese architect Joseph Hoffmann, is an Art Nouveau masterpiece, a
grand marble-clad home based on a series of cubic shapes.

Since
Annie Stoclet, the original owner's daughter-in -law, died five years
ago, aged 94, the building has been allowed to languish, its doors kept
closed to visitors. A couple of caretakers are now the building's only
residents, kept on to tend to the central heating and keep the damp
Brussels winter from damaging the Art Nouveau treasures.