It was designed by Charles Étienne Soubre and Jean-Laurent Hasse and is the only building constructed for the Liège International in 1905 which was not demolished at the end of the event.
The Walloon art was moved out in 1980 to a complex in the Féronstrée et Hors-Château district designed by Henri Bonhomme.
The Palais underwent a major renovation from 1988 onwards, reinstating the open space from the original 1905 design.
At the end of 2011 the musée des beaux-arts was revived in the Bonhomme building as part of a plan to combine MAMAC, the 'Fonds ancien' collection, the prints and drawings and the museum of Walloon art into a single entity named Musée des Beaux-Arts de Liège or BAL (Beaux-Arts Liège), housed in the former Walloon art galleries.
On 28 February 2016 the Musée des Beaux-Arts closed and the whole collection was moved to a new museum housed in the Palais, named La Boverie.