Driving back and forth along the Avenue de Tervueren in Brussels, we got tantalizing glimpses through a low steel fence of the Palais Stoclet, a home by architect Joseph Hofman built in 1911 for industrialist Adolphe Stoclet.  It’s still owned by the family, has been named a UNESCO heritage site, and is, very occasionally, open to the public.  It was closed when we were there.  Sitting among the other larger, hopelessly bourgeois-looking brick and stone homes on this elegant tree-lined street, the Palais, with its pearlish white marble walls and attenuated proportions, seemed finer and sweeter, like an apparition.

Those who have been fortunate enough to step inside describe rooms finished with sumptuous Weiner Werkstatte interiors.  The grainy black and white photographs we have show mosaics on the floors, murals on the walls, and custom-designed furniture and tableware by Hoffman and Koloman Moser in each room.  The dining room is graced by the four legendary Klimt mosaic friezes “The Tree of Life."  Although they’ve been seen by only a handful of visitors, they’re well-known through the studies Klimt executed for them.  While I’d love to have visited I’m mostly just pleased that the house, inside and outside, is intact.  (I can imagine collector Ronald Lauder buying the klimt mosaics and having them reinstalled at the Neue Galerie in New York, behind bulletproof glass.)  That the house remains a mystery to me, and most other people too, is just fine.