Brussels to get Pompidou Centre art museum

The European "capital" of Brussels is going to get its own version of the Pompidou Centre, the contemporary art gallery in Paris that has become one of world's biggest cultural attractions.

The new Pompidou branch will be housed in a landmark building which residents of Brussels more closely associate with grease and grime, a 16,000 square-metre car garage on the banks of the city's rustbelt canal.

"The Brussels region and the Pompidou Centre have signed a deal for the creation of a Pompidou Centre Brussels at the heart of a cultural hub," the Paris-based museum said in a tweet.

Brussels has a somewhat grey reputation as home to the headquarters of the European Union and NATO and it is hoped that the new gallery will promote the city as a destination for the arts.

The regional government of Brussels bought the vast location from French car manufacturer Citroen in 2015 for 20.5 million euros ($23.0 million) with the ambition of creating a cultural site to rival the MOMA in New York or the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

The imposing white building features the large windows of Art Nouveau architecture from the 1930s, and is located close to the Brussels canal, northwest of the city centre.

Just over the canal is the gritty district of Molenbeek, home to several of the jihadists who carried out the attacks on Brussels earlier this year and Paris in November 2015.