The Atomium in Brussels is one of the tourist highlights of Belgium and was built specifically for the World Expo in 1958. Nearly 15,000 workers spent three years building the 2 km site, found on the Heysel plateau, seven kilometres northwest of Brussels. The site is best known for a giant model of a unit cell of an iron crystal (each sphere representing an atom), called the Atomium, which decades later remains one of the best known landmarks of Brussels.The 1958 Expo could be said to be a reflection of a changing society and of the economical , technical and social advances towards modernity that paved the way for the age of prosperity the Western World experienced in the sixties. The Expo ran for 6 months and was visited by over 42 million people. The exhibition features archived documents, such as the plans of the 1958 Expo, typical fifties objects, films of the time showing what was going on in the aisles of the Expo, several scale models including the Civil Engineering Arrow and the Place de Brouckere information centre, which transport the visitor back to the world of 58 and the spectacle of this unique event.
As a symbol of these years of optimism, Expo 58 left an idyllic picture to the Belgians of a period of hope and utopia that can be discovered or rediscovered through the exhibition.
