So we go for a walk over the weekend and give the Villa Empain the once over. Now a 'Center for Art and Dialogue between the East and the West' it has been in its previous incarnations the Russian Embassy and the centre of operations for the Belgian television company before being left to crumble and decay. Art Deco is not a style I warm to (the Le Corbusier Protestant in me, perhaps) - and here everything is just too opulent and heavy with gilt and marble.

I decide to wait outside for the others and sit on the steps enjoying the sunshine. Then I am aware of one of the guards - an attractive woman in her thirties - asking me to move. I am puzzled - why? Because. I ask again - and she cannot give me any good reason beyond 'her superior told her so'. I toy with making a scene and decide not to (not in front of the children ... friends ... etc.). However I am genuinely bewildered why someone cannot sit on the steps outside this building. I was not defacing a wall, threatening a terrorist outrage, making lewd gestures with any part of my body. I could make a list of distinguished galleries, museums and other shrines to Kulchur that I have sat outside on the steps (eating a sandwich, writing in a notebook, simply staring into space).

What's so great - or precious - about this particular location?

One thing's for sure: I won't be going again.