VILLA LA ROCHE-AU-BOIS

Rue du Jeu de Paume leads the walker to Balmoral and offers a panoramic view of the spa town. The upper part of the road runs alongside several large properties. At the height of a cross dating from 1911, called the "Cross of the Old Road of Verviers", the silhouette of the Cross-Ways villa can be seen on the left between the trees. On the right, the park of the villa "La Roche-au-Bois" extends. On the right, above the rue du Jeu de Paume, the villa La Roche-au-Bois is set in a large park designed by the landscape architect Joseph Hensgens in 1928. This park is listed in the Inventory of Parks and Gardens of Wallonia. Today it is characterised by large trees (beech) and beautiful rhododendron beds. Joseph Hensgens is also the designer of the remarkable garden of the Lébioles manor in Creppe. Coming from the rue du Jeu de Paume, the walker first discovers the outbuildings of the villa. Along the road, the former caretaker's house has been converted into a doctor's surgery. The building has a small outside gallery closed by a woodenclosed by a wooden railing. A greenhouse completes the buildings. The villa was designed for Emile Digneffe, mayor of Liège from 1921 to 1937, by the Verviers architect Albert Charles Duesberg, in a style of classical inspiration combined with that of English private architecture. It has a sandstone and limestone rubble floor topped by a floor in the large slate roof with dormer windows. On the façade, three central bays are slightly overhanging and are crowned by acrowned by a triangular pediment. The entrance is marked by a portico supported by two Tuscan columns.The term VILLA, linked to the context of the thermal towns, designates an elegant house located near the town and surrounded by aclose to the town and surrounded by green areas. The villas are distinguished by their style, borrowing elements of ornamentation from various places and periods, mixing tradition and modernity, decoration and functionalism.