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From near the Musee Camille Lemonnier, rue de la Tulipe leads south back to the chaussee d'Ixelles and place Fernand Cocq , a small, refreshingly leafy square named after a one-time Ixelles burgomaster, and lined with a good selection of bars, including Volle Gas and L'Amour Fou . The square's centrepiece is the Maison communale , a sturdy Neoclassical building built by the Flemish architect Vanderstraeten for the opera singer Maria Malibran , nee Garcia (1808-36), and her lover, the Belgian violinist Charles de Beriot. Malibran was one of the great stars of her day and her contralto voice created a sensation when she first appeared on the stage in London in 1825. Her father, one Manuel Garcia, trained her and organized her tours, but pushed his daughter into a most unfortunate marriage in New York. Mr Malibran turned out to be a bankrupt and Maria pluckily left husband and father behind, returning to Europe to pick up her career. She was fantastically successful and had this Ixelles mansion built for herself and Beriot in 1833. After her death, the house lay uninhabited until it was bought by the Ixelles commune in 1849; the gardens in which Maria once practised have been reduced to the small park which now edges the house.
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