tour guide bruxelles

THE 10 BEST Brussels Tours & Excursions

Brussels tours.

• Walking Tours
• Historical & Heritage Tours
• Cultural Tours
• Up to 1 hour
• 1 to 4 hours
• 4 hours to 1 day
• 5.0 of 5 bubbles
• 4.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• 3.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• 2.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• Chinese (Simplified)
• Likely to Sell Out
• Special Offers
• The ranking of tours, activities, and experiences available on Tripadvisor is determined by several factors including the revenue generated by Tripadvisor from these bookings, the frequency of user clicks, and the volume and quality of customer reviews. Occasionally, newly listed offerings may be prioritized and appear higher in the list. The specific placement of these new listings may vary.

1. Bruges and Ghent - Belgium's Fairytale Cities - from Brussels

2. Hungry Mary's Famous Beer and Chocolate Tour in Brussels

3. Luxembourg and Dinant Day Trip from Brussels

4. Brussels Walking and Tasting Tour

5. Brussels: Historical Walking Tour with Chocolate & Waffle Tasting

6. Private Brussels Tour with a Local, Highlights & Hidden Gems, Custom

7. Bruges Day Trip from Brussels

8. Brussels Chocolate Beer Waffle and Belgian Whiskey All-in-One (Small Group) Tour

9. The Most Complete Tour Of Brussels

10. Belgian Chocolate Making Class and Tasting in Brussels

11. Guided Walking Tour in Brussels

12. Amsterdam Day Trip from Brussels

13. Brussels Discovery Tour: Belgian food, chocolate, waffles, beer, sightseeing

14. Brussels PRIVATE TOUR With Locals: Highlights & Hidden Gems

15. Belgian Beer Tasting in Brussels

16. Bruges by bike tour with the locals

17. Brussels Chocolate Walking Tour and Workshop

18. Bruges and Ghent Day Trip from Brussels

19. Brussels Walking Food Tour With Secret Food Tours

20. 2.5h Belgian Chocolate Workshop in Brussels

21. Antwerp and Ghent Day Trip from Brussels With Atomium Photo Stop

22. Historic Battle of the Bulge Sites Private Tour from Brussels

23. Brussels Pub Crawl - Nightlife & Party Experience

24. Private Full-Day Trip to Bruges&Ghent from Brussels with tastings

25. The 10 Tastings of Brussels With Locals: PRIVATE Food Tour (B-Corp certified)

26. Brussels Small-Group Chocolate Appreciation Tour

27. Flanders Fields Remembrance Tour from Brussels with Lunch

28. Marc's Brussels Beer Tasting Tour

29. Brussels Private Custom Tour with a Local Guide, Kickstart your Trip

30. Bike tour Brussels highlights and hidden gems

What travelers are saying.

• Bruges and Ghent - Belgium's Fairytale Cities - from Brussels
• Hungry Mary's Famous Beer and Chocolate Tour in Brussels
• The Most Complete Tour Of Brussels
• Luxembourg and Dinant Day Trip from Brussels
• Brussels: Historical Walking Tour with Chocolate & Waffle Tasting
• Tram Experience
• Sea of Clouds - Brussels
• Soda Entertainment
• Legends of Brussels
• SANDEMANs NEW Europe - Brussels
• A Zonzo Tour
• BEM BELGA - Seu guia na Bélgica
• Bravo Discovery
• Beer Experience in Brussels
• Hungry Mary - Food Tours
• Cactus Brussel à Vélo
• Atelier de Recherche et d'Action Urbaines - ARAU
• Brussels Photo Tour
• City Runs asbl
• Segway Brussels
• Belgium Limousine Services
• Brussels Pub Crawl
• Jaxsun Sports Kiteschool

BRUSSELS CITY TOURS Grasmarkt, 61, Rue du Marché aux Herbes B 1000 BRUSSELS (Belgium)

0032 (0)2/513.77.44

Brussels Travel Guide

Book your individual trip , stress-free with local travel experts

• roughguides.com
• Travel guide
• Local Experts
• Travel Advice

Accommodation

Plan your tailor-made trip with a local expert

Book securely with money-back guarantee

Travel stress-free with local assistance and 24/7 support

Wherever else you go in Belgium, allow at least a little time for BRUSSELS , which is undoubtedly one of Europe’s premier cities. Certainly, don’t let its unjustified reputation as a dull, faceless centre of EU bureaucracy deter you: in postwar years, the city has become a thriving, cosmopolitan metropolis, with top-flight museums and architecture (including a well-preserved late seventeenth-century centre), a superb restaurant scene and an energetic nightlife. Moreover, most of the key attractions are crowded into a centre that is small enough to be absorbed over a few long days, its boundaries largely defined by a ring of boulevards – the “petit ring”, or less colloquially, the “petite ceinture”.

Around Brussels: Waterloo

Bilingual brussels, the brussels card, east of the centre: the eu quarter and le cinquantenaire, eating and drinking, the grand-place, guided tours, the lower town, nightlife and entertainment, north of the centre: jette, laeken and heysel, south of the centre: st-gilles, avenue louise and ixelles, train station names, the upper town.

First-time visitors to Brussels are often surprised by the raw vitality of the city centre. It isn’t neat and tidy, and many of the old tenement houses are shabby and ill-used, but there’s a buzz about the place that’s hard to resist. The city centre is divided into two main areas. The larger westerly portion comprises the Lower Town , fanning out from the marvellous Grand-Place , with its exquisite guildhouses and town hall, while up above, on a ridge to the east, lies the much smaller Upper Town , home to the finest art collection in the country in the Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts.

Since the eleventh century, the ruling elite has lived in the Upper Town, keeping a beady eye on the workers and shopkeepers down below – a state of affairs that still – in part – remains. In recent times, this fundamental class division, so obvious in the layout of the centre, has been further complicated by discord between Belgium’s two main linguistic groups, the Walloons (the French-speakers) and the Flemings (the Dutch- or Flemish-speakers), and to add to the communal stew, these two groups now share their city with many others, including EU civil servants and immigrants from North and Central Africa, Turkey and the Mediterranean. Each of these communities tends to live a very separate, distinct existence, and Brussels’ compact nature heightens the contrasts: in five minutes you can walk from a chichi shopping mall into an African bazaar, or from a depressed slum quarter to a resplendent square of antique shops and exclusive cafés. This is something that increases the city’s allure, not least by way of the sheer variety of affordable cafés and restaurants – Brussels is a wonderful place to eat, its gastronomic reputation rivalling that of Paris. It’s also a great place to drink, with bars ranging from designer chic to rough and ready with everything in between.

The city’s specialist shops are another pleasure. Everyone knows about Belgian chocolates, but here in the capital there are also huge open-air markets, contemporary art galleries and establishments devoted to anything from comic books to costume jewellery and clubland fashion. Furthermore, Belgium is such a small country, and the rail network so fast and efficient, that Brussels also makes the perfect base for a wide range of day-trips. An obvious target is the battlefield of Waterloo , one of the region’s most visited attractions.

Brief history

Brussels takes its name from Broekzele, or “village of the marsh”, the community which grew up beside the wide and shallow River Senne in the sixth century, allegedly around a chapel built here by St Géry, a French bishop turned missionary. A tiny and insignificant part of Charlemagne’s empire at the end of the eighth century, it was subsequently inherited by the dukes of Lower Lorraine (or Lotharingia – roughly Wallonia and northeast France), who constructed a fortress here in 979. Protected, the village benefited from its position on the trade route between Cologne and the burgeoning towns of Bruges and Ghent to become a significant trading centre in its own right. The surrounding marshes were drained to allow for further expansion, and in 1229 the city was granted its first charter by the dukes of Brabant , the new feudal overlords who controlled things here, on and off, for around two hundred years. In the early fifteenth century, marriage merged the interests of the Duchy of Brabant with that of Burgundy, whose territories passed to the Habsburgs in 1482 when Mary, the last of the Burgundian line, died; she was succeeded by her husband, Maximilian I, who was anointed Holy Roman Emperor in 1494.

The first Habsburg rulers had close ties with Brussels, and the Emperor Charles V (1519–55) ran his vast kingdom from the city for over a decade, making it wealthy and politically important in equal measure. By contrast, his successor Philip II (1527–98) lived in Spain and ruled through a governor (for the whole of the Low Countries) resident in Brussels. It could have been a perfectly reasonable arrangement, but Philip’s fanatical Catholicism soon unpicked the equilibrium. Horrified by the Protestant leanings of many of his Low Country subjects, the king imposed a series of anti-Protestant edicts, and when these provoked extensive rioting , he dispatched an army of ten thousand men – led by a hardline reactionary, the Duke of Albe – to crush his opponents in Brussels absolutely. Albe quickly restored order and then, with the help of the Inquisition, set about the rioters with gusto, his Commission of Civil Unrest soon nicknamed the “ Council of Blood ” after its habit of executing those it examined. Goaded into rebellion by Albe’s brutality, Brussels, along with much of the Low Countries, exploded in revolt, and in 1577, the one-time protégé of the Habsburgs, William the Silent , made a triumphant entry into the city and installed a Calvinist government. Protestant control lasted for just eight years, before Philip’s armies recaptured Brussels – and the king wasn’t a man to forgive and forget. Seeing which way the religious wind was blowing, hundreds of Protestants left the city and the economy slumped, though complete catastrophe was averted by the conspicuous consumption of the (Brussels-based) Habsburg elite, whose high spending kept hundreds of workers in employment. Brussels also benefited from the digging of the Willebroek Canal, which linked it to the sea for the first time in its history in 1561.

By the 1580s, the Habsburgs had lost control of the northern part of the Low Countries (now the Netherlands) and Brussels was confirmed as the capital of the remainder, the Spanish Netherlands (broadly modern Belgium). Brussels prospered more than the rest of the country, but it was always prey to the dynastic squabbling between France and Spain: in 1695, for example, Louis XIV bombarded Brussels for 36 hours merely to teach his rivals a lesson, though the guilds , those associations of skilled merchants and workers who were crucial to the economy of Brussels, rebuilt their devastated city in double time, and it’s this version of the Grand-Place that survives today.

In 1700 Charles II, the last of the Spanish Habsburgs, died without issue. The ensuing War of the Spanish Succession dragged on for over a decade, but eventually the Spanish Netherlands were passed to the Austrian Habsburgs, who ruled – as had their predecessors – through a governor based in Brussels. It was during this period as capital of the Austrian Netherlands (1713–94) that most of the monumental buildings of the Upper Town were constructed and its Neoclassical avenues and boulevards laid out – grand extravagance in the context of an increasingly industrialized city crammed with a desperately poor working class.

The French Revolutionary army brushed the Austrians aside at the Battle of Fleurus in 1794, and the Austrian Netherlands promptly became a département of France. This lasted until the defeat of Napoleon when, under the terms of the Congress of Vienna which ended hostilities, the great powers decided to absorb the country into the new Kingdom of the Netherlands , ruled by the Dutch King William I. Brussels took turns with The Hague as the capital, but the experiment was short-lived, and in 1830 a Brussels-led rebellion removed the Dutch and led to the creation of an independent Belgium with Brussels as capital.

The nineteenth century was a period of modernization and expansion, during which the city achieved all the attributes of a modern European capital under the guidance of Burgomaster Anspach and King Léopold II . New boulevards were built; the free university was founded; the Senne – which by then had become an open sewer – was covered over in the city centre; many slum areas were cleared; and a series of grand buildings were erected. The whole enterprise culminated in the golden jubilee exhibition celebrating the founding of the Belgium state in the newly inaugurated Parc du Cinquantenaire.

Following the German occupation of Belgium in World War II, the modernization of Brussels has proceeded inexorably, with many major development projects – not least the new métro system – refashioning the city and reflecting its elevated status as the headquarters of both NATO and the EU.

Top image © Sira Anamwong/Shutterstock

Tailor-made travel itineraries for Belgium, created by local experts

8 days  / from 2808 USD

The best of the Netherlands and Belgium

This trip will bring you the best of two countries: the Netherlands and Belgium. From the quaint streets, canals and windmills of Holland to beer and Belgium chocolate tasting in three beautiful Belgium cities. This trip has it all.

9 days  / from 3024 USD

Experience the Liberation Route in BeNeLux

Explore the path of the World War II Liberation Route through Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Visit important landmarks and museums on the way with this self drive itinerary, with enough time to explore cities such as Brussels and Rotterdam on the way.

10 days  / from 5616 USD

Taste of Three - Belgium, France and Switzerland

Start your journey in Belgium and explore Brussels, Ghent and Bruges. A high-speed train will then take you to Strasbourg, from where you'll discover the Alsace. Proceed to Basel as your base, from where you'll see plenty of Switzerland: Zermatt, Matterhorn, Mount Pilatus and much more.

With over seventy hotels dotted within its central ring of boulevards, Brussels has no shortage of convenient places to stay, but even so finding hotel accommodation can still prove difficult, particularly in the spring and autumn when the capital enjoys what amounts to its high seasons – July and August are much slacker as the business trade dips when the EU (pretty much) closes down for its summer recess. The same cautions apply to the city’s B&Bs , though these are thin on the ground. If you do opt for a B&B, don’t expect UK-style hospitality – in effect you get a self-contained room in a private house – but do expect to be on the peripheries of town, a good way from the action. The city has half a dozen hostels , of which we have listed the best options.

At peak times, it’s prudent to reserve a bed at least for your first night, but if you do arrive with nowhere to stay, the city’s two main tourist offices operate a free same-night hotel booking service . Hotel prices vary hugely. Many have both deluxe and more standard rooms, with charges adjusted accordingly, and regular special and weekend discounts bring prices down by about fifteen percent, with some places occasionally halving their rates.

Brussels lies at the centre of Brabant , one of Belgium’s nine provinces. The Flemings claim the lion’s share of the province with their Vlaams Brabant (Flemish Brabant) actually encircling the capital – a noticeably narrow corridor of Flemish-speaking communities runs round the southern edge of Brussels. WATERLOO is easily the most popular attraction in Brabant Wallon (French-speaking Brabant) and is best seen on a day-trip from the capital. A run-of-the-mill suburb about 18km south of the centre of Brussels, the town has a resonance far beyond its size. On June 18, 1815, at this small crossroads town on what was once the main route to Brussels from France, Wellington masterminded the battle that put an end to the imperial ambitions of Napoleon. The battle turned out to have far more significance than even its generals realized, for not only was this the last throw of the dice for the formidable army born of the French Revolution, but it also marked the end of France’s prolonged attempts to dominate Europe militarily.

Nevertheless, the historic importance of Waterloo has not saved the battlefield from interference – a motorway cuts right across it – and if you do visit you’ll need a lively imagination to picture what happened and where – unless, that is, you’re around to see the large-scale re-enactment which takes place every five years in June; the next one is scheduled for 2015. Scattered round the battlefield are several monuments and memorials, the most satisfying of which is the Butte de Lion , a huge earth mound that’s part viewpoint and part commemoration. The battlefield is 3km south of the centre of Waterloo, where the Musée Wellington is easily the pick of several Waterloo museums.

The battlefield – Le Hameau de Lion

Some 4km south of town, the Waterloo battlefield is a landscape of rolling farmland, interrupted by a couple of main roads and more pleasingly punctuated by the odd copse and farmstead. The ridge where Wellington once marshalled his army now holds a motley assortment of attractions collectively known as Le Hameau du Lion (Lion’s Hamlet). This comprises four separate sites all within a few metres of each other, with the added offering of a 45-minute battlefield tour in a four-wheel-drive. Of the four sites, the worst are the Centre du Visiteur , which features a dire audiovisual display on the battle, and the Musée de Cires (same hours), a dusty wax museum. The best is the 100m-high Butte de Lion (same hours), built by local women with soil from the battlefield. The Butte marks the spot where Holland’s Prince William of Orange – one of Wellington’s commanders and later King William II of the Netherlands – was wounded. It was only a nick, so goodness knows how high it would have been if William had been seriously injured, but even so the mound is a commanding monument, surmounted by a regal 28-tonne lion atop a stout column. From the viewing platform, there’s a panoramic view over the battlefield, and a plan identifies which army was where. Also enjoyable is the Panorama de la Bataille (same hours), where a circular, naturalistic painting of the battle, on a canvas no less than 110m in circumference, is displayed in a purpose-built, rotunda-like gallery – to a thundering soundtrack of bugles, snorting horses and cannon fire. Panorama painting is extremely difficult – controlling perspective is always a real problem – but it was very much in vogue when the Parisian artist Louis Dumoulin began this effort in 1912. Precious few panoramas have survived and this one is a bit past its best, but it does at least give a sense of the battle. You can also venture out onto the battlefield under your own steam by following the old track that cuts south across the fields from beside the Panorama.

The Battle of Waterloo

Napoleon escaped from imprisonment on the Italian island of Elba on February 26, 1815. He landed in Cannes three days later and moved swiftly north, entering Paris on March 20 just as his unpopular replacement – the slothful King Louis XVIII – high-tailed it to Ghent. Thousands of Frenchmen rallied to Napoleon’s colours and, with little delay, Napoleon marched northeast to fight the two armies that threatened his future. Both were in Belgium. One, an assortment of British, Dutch and German soldiers, was commanded by the Duke of Wellington , the other was a Prussian army led by Marshal Blücher . At the start of the campaign, Napoleon’s army was about 130,000 strong, larger than each of the opposing armies but not big enough to fight them both at the same time. Napoleon’s strategy was, therefore, quite straightforward: he had to stop Wellington and Blücher from joining together – and to this end he crossed the Belgian frontier near Charleroi to launch a quick attack. On June 16, the French hit the Prussians hard, forcing them to retreat and giving Napoleon the opportunity he was looking for. Napoleon detached a force of 30,000 soldiers to harry the retreating Prussians, while he concentrated his main army against Wellington, hoping to deliver a knockout blow. Meanwhile, Wellington had assembled his troops at Waterloo , on the main road to Brussels.

At dawn on Sunday June 18 , the two armies faced each other. Wellington had some 68,000 men, about one third of whom were British, and Napoleon around five thousand more. The armies were deployed just 1500m apart with Wellington on the ridge north of – and uphill from – the enemy. It had rained heavily during the night, so Napoleon delayed his first attack to give the ground a chance to dry. At 11.30am , the battle began when the French assaulted the fortified farm of Hougoumont, which was crucial for the defence of Wellington’s right. The assault failed and at approximately 1pm there was more bad news for Napoleon when he heard that the Prussians had eluded their pursuers and were closing fast. To gain time he sent 14,000 troops off to impede their progress and at 2pm he tried to regain the initiative by launching a large-scale infantry attack against Wellington’s left. This second French attack also proved inconclusive and so at 4pm Napoleon’s cavalry charged Wellington’s centre, where the British infantry formed into squares and just managed to keep the French at bay – a desperate engagement that cost hundreds of lives. By 5.30pm , the Prussians had begun to reach the battlefield in numbers to the right of the French lines and, at 7.30pm , with the odds getting longer and longer, Napoleon made a final bid to break Wellington’s centre, sending in his Imperial Guard. These were the best soldiers Napoleon had, but slowed down by the mud churned up by their own cavalry, the veterans proved easy targets for the British infantry, and they were beaten back with great loss of life. At 8.15pm , Wellington, who knew victory was within his grasp, rode down the ranks to encourage his soldiers before ordering the large-scale counterattack that proved decisive.

The French were vanquished and Napoleon subsequently abdicated , ending his days in exile on St Helena, where he died in 1821. Popular memory, however, refused to vilify Napoleon as the aggressor – and not just in France, but right across Europe, where the Emperor’s bust was a common feature of the nineteenth-century drawing room. In part, this was to do with Napoleon’s obvious all-round brilliance, but more crucially, he soon became a symbol of opportunity: in him the emergent middle classes of western Europe saw a common man becoming greater than the crowned heads of Europe, an almost unique event at the time.

The Musée Wellington

The Musée Wellington , chaussée de Bruxelles 147 ( w www.museewellington.com ), occupies the old inn where Wellington slept the nights before and after the battle. It’s an enjoyable affair, whose displays detail the build-up to – and the course of – the battle via plans and models, alongside an engaging hotchpotch of personal effects. Room 4 holds the bed where Alexander Gordon, Wellington’s principal aide-de-camp, was brought to die, and here also is the artificial leg of Lord Uxbridge, another British commander: “I say, I’ve lost my leg,” Uxbridge is reported to have said during the battle, to which Wellington replied, “By God, sir, so you have!” After the battle, Uxbridge’s leg was buried here in Waterloo, but it was returned to London when he died to join the rest of his body; as a consolation, his artificial leg was donated to the museum. Such insouciance was not uncommon among the British ruling class and neither were the bodies of the dead soldiers considered sacrosanct: tooth dealers roamed the battlefields of the Napoleonic Wars pulling out teeth, which were then stuck on two pieces of board with a spring at the back – primitive dentures known in England as “Waterloos”.

In Wellington’s bedroom, Room 6 , there are copies of the messages Wellington sent to his commanders during the course of the battle, curiously formal epistles laced with phrases like “Could you be so kind as to …”. Finally, an extension at the back of the museum reprises what has gone before, albeit on a slightly larger scale, with more models, plans and military paraphernalia plus a lucid outline of the immediate historical background.

As a cumbersome compromise between Belgium’s French- and Flemish-speaking communities, Brussels is the country’s only officially bilingual region . This means that every instance of the written word, from road signs and street names to the Yellow Pages , has by law to appear in both languages. Visitors soon adjust – though on arrival the names of the main train stations can be confusing – but for simplicity we’ve used the French version of street names, sights etc.

The good-value Brussels Card ( w www.brusselscard.be ) provides free access to most of the city’s key museums, unlimited travel on the STIB public transport network, and discounts of up to 25 percent at specified restaurants and bars. There are three versions – 24hr (€24), 48hr (€34), and 72hr (€40) – and each is valid from the first time it is used, rather than the day of issue. The card is on sale online via the website and at both main tourist offices; there are no concessionary rates for seniors or children. It’s issued with a booklet detailing all the concessions and discounts.

Brussels by no means ends at the petit ring . King Léopold II pushed the city limits out beyond the course of the old walls, grabbing land from the surrounding communes to create the irregular boundaries that survive today. To the east , he sequestered a rough rectangle of land across which he ploughed two wide boulevards to link the city centre with Le Cinquantenaire , a self-glorifying and markedly grandiose monument erected to celebrate the golden jubilee of Belgian independence, and one that now houses three sprawling museums, two specialists and the more general Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire . There’s no disputing the grandness of Léopold’s design, but in recent decades it has been overlaid with the uncompromising office blocks of the EU. These high-rises coalesce hereabouts to form the loosely defined EU quarter , not a particularly enjoyable area to explore, though the strikingly flashy European Parliament building is of passing interest, especially as it is just footsteps from the fascinating – and fascinatingly eccentric – paintings of the Musée Antoine Wiertz . If, however, you’ve an insatiable appetite for the monuments of Léopold, then you should venture further east to Tervuren , where the king built the massive Musée Royal de L’Afrique Centrale on the edge of the woods of the Forêt de Soignes.

The EU in Brussels

The three main institutions of the European Union operate mainly, though not exclusively, from Brussels. The European Parliament carries out its committee work and the majority of its business in Brussels, heading off for Strasbourg for around twelve, three-day plenary sessions per year. It’s the only EU institution to meet and debate in public, and has been directly elected since 1979. There are currently 736 MEPs, and they sit in political blocks rather than national delegations; members are very restricted on speaking time, and debates tend to be well-mannered consensual affairs, controlled by the President , who is elected for a five-year period by Parliament itself – although this mandate is often split in two and shared by the two biggest political groups. The Conference of Presidents – the President of the Parliament and Leaders of all the political groups – meet to plan future parliamentary business. Supporting and advising this political edifice is a complex network of committees from agriculture to human rights.

The European Council consists of the heads of government of each of the member states and the President of the European Commission; they meet twice every six months in the much-publicized “European Summits”. However, in between these meetings, ministers responsible for different issues meet in the Council of the European Union , the main decision-making structure alongside the European Parliament. There are complex rules regarding decision-making: some subjects require only a simple majority, others need unanimous support, some can be decided by the Council alone, others need the agreement of Parliament. This political structure is underpinned by scores of Brussels-based committees and working parties, made up of both civil servants and political appointees.

The European Commission acts as the EU’s executive arm and board of control, managing funds and monitoring all manner of agreements. The 27 Commissioners are political appointees, nominated by their home countries, but their tenure has to be agreed by the European Parliament and they remain accountable to the MEPs. The president of the Commission is elected by the European Parliament for a five-year period of office. Over twenty thousand civil servants work for the Commission, whose headquarters are in Brussels, mainly in the Berlaymont and adjacent Charlemagne building on rue de la Loi as well as other buildings in the Schuman area.

Brussels can hold its own with any international city when it comes to eating out , and whatever your taste, price range or preferred type of cuisine there is almost always something that will suit. Look out particularly for traditional Bruxellois dishes, canny amalgamations of Walloon and Flemish ingredients and cooking styles, whether rabbit cooked in beer, steamed pigs’ feet or waterzooi (for more on Belgian specialities). As for where to eat, the distinction between the city’s cafés , café-bars and restaurants is fairly elastic, and there are great places over the city, with particular concentrations on place Ste-Catherine and rue du Flandre in the Lower Town and place Boniface and place du Châtelain in Ixelles.

Drinking in Brussels, as in the rest of the country, is a joy. The city boasts an enormous variety of café-bars and bars : sumptuous Art Nouveau establishments, traditional bars with ceilings stained brown by a century’s smoke, speciality beer bars with literally hundreds of different varieties of ale and, of course, more modern hangouts. Many of the more distinctive bars are handily located within a few minutes’ walk of the Grand-Place and also in Ixelles, but really you’ll be spoiled for choice.

There’s no smoking in any establishment that sells food, along with bars and clubs.

Restaurants

Restaurant opening times are pretty standard – a couple of hours at lunchtime, usually noon to 2pm or 2.30pm, and again in the evening from 7pm to around 10pm; precise hours are given with the reviews below. At all but the cheapest restaurants, advance reservations are recommended, especially on Friday and Saturday evenings.

Bars and cafés

Belgians make little – or no – distinction between their bars and cafés : both serve alcohol, many stay open late (until 2am or even 3am) and most sell food as well. What you won’t find (thank goodness) are lots of the coffee house chains which beleaguer so many big cities.

The obvious place to begin any tour of Brussels is the Grand-Place , one of Europe’s most beautiful squares, which sits among a labyrinth of narrow, cobbled alleys and lanes at the heart of the Lower Town. Here, the Gothic extravagance of the Hôtel de Ville (town hall) presides over the gilded facades of a full set of late seventeenth-century guildhouses , whose columns, scrolled gables and dainty sculptures encapsulate Baroque ideals of balance and harmony. Inevitably, such an outstanding attraction draws tourists and expats in their droves, but there’s no better place to get a taste of Brussels’ past and Eurocapital present.

Originally marshland, the Grand-Place was drained in the twelfth century, and by 1350 covered markets for bread, meat and cloth had been erected, born of an economic boom that was underpinned by a flourishing cloth industry. Later, the Grand-Place’s role as the commercial hub of the emergent city was cemented when the city’s guilds built their headquarters on the square and, in the fifteenth century, it also assumed a civic and political function with the construction of the Hôtel de Ville. The ruling dukes visited the square to meet the people or show off in tournaments, and it was here that official decrees and pronouncements were proclaimed.

During the religious wars of the sixteenth century, the Grand-Place became as much a place of public execution as trade, but thereafter resumed its former role as a marketplace. Of the square’s medieval buildings, however, only parts of the Hôtel de Ville and one or two guildhouses have survived, the consequence of an early example of the precepts of total war, a 36-hour French artillery bombardment which pretty much razed Brussels to the ground in 1695; the commander of the French artillery gloated, “I have never yet seen such a great fire nor so much desolation”. After the French withdrew, the city’s guildsmen dusted themselves down and speedily had their headquarters rebuilt, adopting the distinctive and flamboyant Baroque style that characterizes the square today.

The health of Charles II

Philip IV of Spain (1605–65) had no fewer than fourteen children, but only one of his sons – Charles II (1661–1700) – reached his twenties. With women banned from the succession, the hapless, sickly Charles became king aged just four and, much to everyone’s surprise, survived to adulthood. After his first marriage in 1679, there were great hopes that he would sire an heir , but none arrived, allegedly because Charles suffered from premature ejaculation. A second marriage, twenty years later, was equally fruitless and, as it became increasingly clear that Charles was unable to procreate, Europe focused on what was to happen when Charles died and the Spanish royal line died out. Every ambassador to the Spanish court wrote long missives home about the health of Charles, none more so than the English representative, Stanhope , who painted an especially gloomy picture: “He (Charles) has a ravenous stomach and swallows all he eats whole, for his nether jaw stands out so much that his two rows of teeth cannot meet…His weak stomach not being able to digest the food, he voids it in the same (whole) manner.”

In the autumn of 1700, it was clear that Charles was dying and his doctors went to work in earnest, replacing his pillows with freshly killed pigeons and covering his chest with animal entrails. Not surprisingly, this didn’t work and Charles died on November 1, an event which triggered the War of the Spanish Succession .

The Hôtel de Ville

From the south side of the Grand-Place, the scrubbed and polished Hôtel de Ville (town hall) dominates proceedings, its 96m spire soaring high above two long series of robust windows, whose straight lines are mitigated by fancy tracery and an arcaded gallery. The edifice dates from the beginning of the fifteenth century, when the town council decided to build itself a mansion that adequately reflected its wealth and power. The first part to be completed was the east wing – the original entrance is marked by the twin lions of the Lion Staircase, though the animals were only added in 1770. Work started on the west wing in 1444 and continued until 1480. Despite the gap, the wings are of very similar style, and you have to look hard to notice that the later one is slightly shorter than its neighbour, allegedly at the insistence of Charles the Bold who – for some unknown reason – refused to have the adjacent rue de la Tête d’Or narrowed. The niches were left empty and the statues seen today, which represent leading figures from the city’s past, were added as part of a nineteenth-century refurbishment.

By any standard, the tower of the Hôtel de Ville is quite extraordinary, its remarkably slender appearance the work of Jan van Ruysbroeck , the leading spire specialist of the day, who also played a leading role in the building of the cathedral. Ruysbroeck had the lower section built square to support the weight above, choosing a design that blended seamlessly with the elaborately carved facade on either side – or almost: look carefully and you’ll see that the main entrance is slightly out of kilter. Ruysbroeck used the old belfry porch as the base for the new tower, hence the misalignment, a deliberate decision rather than the miscalculation which, according to popular legend, prompted the architect’s suicide. Above the cornice protrudes an octagonal extension where the basic design of narrow windows flanked by pencil-thin columns and pinnacles is repeated up as far as the pyramid-shaped spire , a delicate affair surmounted by a gilded figure of St Michael , protector of Christians in general and of soldiers in particular. The tower is off-limits, and guided tours in English are confined to a string of lavish official rooms used for receptions and town council meetings. Tours begin at the reception desk off the interior quadrangle; be prepared for the guides’ overly reverential script.

Guided tours are big business in Brussels; everything from a quick stroll or bus ride round the city centre to themed visits is on offer, and both Brussels International tourist offices have the details of – and take bookings for – about twenty operators. As a general rule, the more predictable tours can be booked on the day, while the more exotic need to be booked ahead of time, either direct with the company concerned or with the tourist office, who normally require at least two weeks’ advance notice. Among the many more straightforward options, Brussels City Tours , rue de la Colline 8 ( w www.brussels-city-tours.com ), operates the Visit Brussels Line, a hop-on, hop-off bus service which loops round the city, visiting twelve of its principal sights.

More promising is ARAU (Atelier de Recherche et d’Action Urbaines), blvd Adolphe Max 55 ( t 02 219 33 45, w www.arau.org ), a heritage action group which provides tours exploring the city’s architectural history – with particular emphasis on Art Nouveau – from April through to December; prices vary with the length of the tour and the itinerary, but average about €10 per person for walking tours, €15 if there’s some transport involved.

Cramped and populous, the Lower Town fans out from the Grand-Place in all directions, bisected by one major north–south boulevard, variously named Adolphe Max, Anspach and Lemonnier. Setting aside the boulevard – which was ploughed through in the nineteenth century – the layout of the Lower Town remains essentially medieval, a skein of narrow, cobbled lanes and alleys in which almost every street is crimped by tall and angular town houses. There’s nothing neat and tidy about all of this, but that’s what gives it its appeal – dilapidated terraces stand next to prestigious mansions and the whole district is dotted with superb buildings, everything from beautiful Baroque churches through to Art Nouveau department stores.

The Lower Town is at its most beguiling to the northwest of the Grand-Place, where the churches of Ste-Catherine and Ste-Jean-Baptiste au Béguinage stand amid a cobweb of quaint streets and tiny squares. The streets to the north of the Grand-Place are of less immediate appeal, with particularly dreary rue Neuve, a pedestrianized main drag that’s home to the city’s mainstream shops and stores, leading up to the clumping skyscrapers that surround the place Rogier and the Gare du Nord. This is an uninviting part of the city, but relief is at hand in the precise Habsburg symmetries of the place des Martyrs and at the Belgian Comic Strip Centre, the Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinée. To the south of the Grand-Place, almost everyone makes a beeline for the city’s mascot, the Manneken Pis , but much more enjoyable is the museum dedicated to Belgium’s most celebrated chansonnier, Jacques Brel .

Éditions Jacques Brel

From the Manneken Pis, it’s a short stroll to place de la Vieille-Halle aux Blés, where the Éditions Jacques Brel ( www.jacquesbrel.be ) is a small but inventive museum celebrating the life and times of the Belgian singer Jacques Brel (1933–78), who was born and raised in Schaarbeek, a suburb of Brussels, though he lived most of his life in France. A legend in his own musical lifetime, Brel became famous in the 1960s as a gravelly voiced singer of mournful chansons about death, loss, desire and love, all of which he wrote himself. Inside the museum, a sequence of life-size tableaux give the impression that you have just missed Brel – a cigarette still burns in the replica bar – and you can watch films of the man in concert in the small and cosy theatre-cum-cinema. Brel’s performances were famous for their intensity and if you watch a show you can’t fail to be affected, though actually liking the music is another thing altogether.

Jacques Brel playlist

If you like what you hear at the Éditions Jacques Brel, you might want to check out some songs from the playlist below, which covers the very best of Brel’s work.

Brel’s deliberately repetitive, climactic tale of sailors in seedy ports is a fantastically evocative song, and was one of his most intense live numbers.

Les Bonbons

This is Brel at his wittiest and most unforgiving, poking fun at 1960s hippies.

Le chanson de Jackie

Brel in autobiographical mode, looking back in fantastically rumbustious fashion on his career and forward into his future.

One of Brel’s greatest love songs, brilliantly covered by Scott Walker.

Le Moribond

The tormented and yet curiously upbeat lament of a dying man that gave rise to the Terry Jacks hit of 1974.

Ne me quitte pas

Brel’s most anguished love song, and perhaps one of the most affecting ever written, memorably covered by Nina Simone.

Quand on n’a que l’amour

One of Brel’s earliest songs, When we have only Love was his first hit single.

The Impossible Dream has been covered by just about everyone and is quite rightly one of Brel’s best-known songs, but his version stands out.

Je suis un soir d’été

This late and very atmospheric study of summer ennui in small-town Belgium is one of Brel’s most beautiful songs.

Brel is typically satirical in this biting rant against war, militarism and middle-class bourgeois values.

Tintin was the creation of Brussels-born Georges Remi , aka Hergé (1907–83). Remi’s first efforts (pre-Tintin) were sponsored by a right-wing Catholic journal, Le XXième Siècle , and in 1929 when this same paper produced a kids’ supplement – Le Petit Vingtième – Remi was given his first major break. He was asked to produce a two-page comic strip and the result was Tintin in the Land of the Soviets , a didactic tale about the evils of Bolshevism. Tintin’s Soviet adventure lasted until May 1930, and to round it all off the director of Le XXième Siècle decided to stage a PR-stunt reception to celebrate Tintin’s return from the USSR. Remi – along with a Tintin lookalike – hopped on a train just east of Brussels and when they pulled into the capital they were mobbed by scores of excited children. Remi and Tintin never looked back. Remi decided on the famous quiff straight away, but other features – the mouth and expressive eyebrows – only came later. His popularity was – and remains – quite phenomenal: Tintin has been translated into sixty languages and over twenty million copies of the comic Le Journal de Tintin , Remi’s own independent creation first published in 1946, have been sold – and that’s not mentioning all the Tintin TV cartoon series. Remi’s life and work are also celebrated at the Musée Hergé in Louvain-la-Neuve.

As far as nightlife goes, it’s likely you’ll be happy to while away the evenings in one of the city’s bars or café-bars – there are plenty in which you can drink until sunrise. If that isn’t enough, Brussels also has a clutch of established clubs , though most of the action revolves around club nights with moveable locations. It’s a fast-moving scene, so the best bet is to check out local websites to see what’s on. Brussels is a good place to catch live bands , with a number of especially appealing smaller venues such as Ancienne Belgique and Botanique . Along with Antwerp, the city is also a regular stop on the European tours of major artists, the big venue being Forest Nationale . Jazz is well catered for too, with several bars playing host to local and international acts, as well as the internationally acclaimed Jazz Marathon held every May ( www.brusselsjazzmarathon.be ).

The classical musical scene is excellent. The Orchestre National de Belgique ( www.nob.be ) enjoys an international reputation and the city showcases a number of excellent classical music festivals. Cream of the crop are the Ars Musica festival of contemporary music held in March ( www.arsmusica.be ), and May’s prestigious Concours Musical Reine Elisabeth ( www.concours-reine-elisabeth.be ), a competition for piano, violin and voice. Opera lovers should make a beeline for the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, which is much praised for staging contemporary interpretations of classic operas, as well as offering a more eclectic repertoire of music and dance. Indeed, the city’s dance scene has been impressing visitors ever since Maurice Béjart brought his classical Twentieth Century Ballet here in 1959. Now the main dance venues are the Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwberg and the Kaaitheatre, but the innovative legacy of Béjart lives on, with his old company (now called Rosas and led by Anne Theresa de Keersmaeker) regularly performing at Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie.

The big players in the Brussels theatre scene are the Francophone Théâtre National and the Flemish Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwberg, but the city also has an abundance of small theatres providing an eclectic programme from experimental theatre to political pieces and comedy. Most productions are performed in French and Flemish, but several American, Irish and British theatre groups put on high-quality amateur productions too.

The free, trilingual Agenda has the most comprehensive listings of concerts and events. Published every Thursday, it can be picked up in all main métro stations, plus some bars and cafés.

To the north of the city centre lies Jette , a well-heeled suburb that wouldn’t merit a second glance if it weren’t for the former home of René Magritte, now turned into the engaging Musée René Magritte , which pays detailed tribute to the artist, his family and friends. East of here is leafy Laeken , where the Belgian royal family hunker down, and next door again is Heysel , with its trademark Atomium , a hand-me-down from the 1958 World’s Fair.

Brussels has a supreme selection of small, independent shops , a smashing range of open-air markets and a number of charming galeries , covered shopping “streets” dating back to the nineteenth century. The main downtown shopping street is rue Neuve , but this is dominated by chain stores; the Galeries St-Hubert , near the Grand-Place, are much more distinctive, accommodating a smattering of upmarket shops and stores, while the nearby Galerie Agora peddles bargain-basement leather jackets, incense, jewellery and ethnic goods. Behind the Bourse, rue Antoine Dansaert caters for the young and fashionable, housing the stores of upcoming designers as well as big Belgian names like Strelli, and in neighbouring St-Géry , rue des Riches Claires and rue du Marché au Charbon are good for streetwear. More than anything else, however, Brussels is famous for three things: comic strips , beer and chocolate .

Generally speaking, shops and stores are open from 10am to 6pm or 7pm Monday through Saturday. On Fridays, most department stores stay open till 8pm, and some tourist-oriented shops open on Sundays too.

Cobwebbed by tiny squares and narrow streets, home to a plethora of local bars and many of the capital’s finest Art Nouveau houses, the neighbouring areas of St-Gilles and Ixelles, just south of the petit ring, make a great escape from the razzmatazz of the city centre. St-Gilles , the smaller of the two communes , does have patches of inner-city decay, but it gets more beautiful the further east it spreads, its run-down streets soon left behind for attractive avenues interspersed with dignified squares. Ixelles , for its part, is one of the capital’s most interesting and exciting outer areas, with a diverse street-life and café scene. Historically something of a cultural crossroads, Ixelles has long drawn artists, writers and intellectuals – Karl Marx, Auguste Rodin and Alexandre Dumas all lived here – and today it retains an arty, sometimes Bohemian feel. Ixelles is cut into two by avenue Louise , a prosperous corridor that is actually part of the city – a territorial anomaly inherited from Léopold II, who laid it out and named it after his eldest daughter in the 1840s. Some of Brussels’ premier hotels, shops and boutiques flank the northern reaches of the avenue and further along is the enjoyable Musée Constantin Meunier , sited in the sculptor’s old house.

More than anything else, however, it’s the superb range of Art Nouveau buildings clustering the streets of St-Gilles and Ixelles that really grab the attention. Many of the finest examples are concentrated on and around the boundary between the two communes – in between chaussée de Charleroi and avenue Louise – and it’s here you’ll find Horta’s own house and studio, now the glorious Musée Victor Horta , one of the few Art Nouveau buildings in the country fully open to the public. Access to most of the city’s Art Nouveau buildings is restricted, so you can either settle for the view from outside, or enrol on one of ARAU’s specialist Art Nouveau tours.

Musée Victor Horta

The best place to start a visit to St-Gilles is the delightful Musée Victor Horta ( w www.hortamuseum.be ), just off the chaussée de Charleroi at rue Américaine 25 and reachable by tram #92 from place Louise. The museum occupies the two houses Horta designed as his home and studio at the end of the nineteenth century, and was where he lived until 1919. The exterior sets the tone, a striking re-working and re-ordering of what was originally a modest terraced structure, the fluidity of the design incorporating almost casually knotted and twisted ironwork. Yet it is for his interiors that Horta is particularly famous. Inside is a sunny, sensuous dwelling exhibiting all the architect’s favourite flourishes – wrought iron, stained glass, ornate furniture and panelling made from several different types of timber. The main unifying feature is the staircase , a dainty spiralling affair, which runs through the centre of the house illuminated by a large skylight. Decorated with painted motifs and surrounded by mirrors, it remains one of Horta’s most magnificent and ingenious creations, giving access to a sequence of wide, bright rooms. Also of interest is the modest but enjoyable selection of paintings, many of which were given to Horta by friends and colleagues, including works by Félicien Rops and Joseph Heymans.

Horta’s progress

The son of a shoemaker, Victor Horta (1861–1947) was born in Ghent, where he failed in his first career, being unceremoniously expelled from the city’s music conservatory for indiscipline. He promptly moved to Paris to study architecture, returning to Belgium in 1880 to complete his internship in Brussels with Alphonse Balat, architect to King Léopold II. Balat was a traditionalist, partly responsible for the classical facades of the Palais Royal – among many other prestigious projects – and Horta looked elsewhere for inspiration. He found it in the work of William Morris, the leading figure of the English Arts and Crafts movement, whose designs were key to the development of Art Nouveau . Taking its name from the Maison de l’Art Nouveau, a Parisian shop which sold items of modern design, Art Nouveau rejected the imitative architectures which were popular at the time – Neoclassical and neo-Gothic – in favour of an innovatory style characterized by sinuous, flowing lines. In England, Morris and his colleagues had focused on book illustrations and furnishings, but in Belgium Horta extrapolated the new style into architecture, experimenting with new building materials – steel and concrete – as well as traditional stone, glass and wood.

In 1893, Horta completed the curvaceous Hôtel Tassel , Brussels’ first Art Nouveau building (“hôtel” meaning town house). Inevitably, there were howls of protest from the traditionalists, but no matter what his opponents said, Horta never lacked work again. The following years – roughly 1893 to 1905 – were Horta’s most inventive and prolific. He designed over forty buildings, including the Hôtel Solvay , the Hôtel Max Hallet , and his own beautifully decorated house and studio, now the Musée Victor Horta . The delight Horta took in his work is obvious, especially when employed on private houses, and his enthusiasm was all-encompassing – he almost always designed everything from the blueprints to the wallpaper and carpets. He never kept a straight line or sharp angle where he could deploy a curve, and his use of light was revolutionary, often filtering through from above, with skylights and as many windows as possible. Horta felt that the architect was as much an artist as the painter or sculptor, and so he insisted on complete stylistic freedom; curiously, he also believed that originality was born of frustration, so he deliberately created architectural difficulties, pushing himself to find harmonious solutions. It was part of a well-thought-out value system that allied him with the political Left; as he wrote, “My friends and I were reds, without however having thought about Marx or his theories”.

Completed in 1906, the Grand Magasin Waucquez department store was a transitional building signalling the end of Horta’s Art Nouveau period. His later works were more Modernist constructions, whose understated lines were a far cry from the ornateness of his earlier work. In Brussels, the best example of his later work is the Palais des Beaux Arts (BOZAR) of 1928.

When you first arrive, the city’s bilingual signage can be very confusing, especially with regard to the names of the three main train stations : Bruxelles-Nord (in Flemish Brussel-Noord), Bruxelles-Centrale (Brussel-Centraal) and, most bewildering of the lot, Bruxelles-Midi (Brussel-Zuid). To add to the puzzle, each of the three adjoins a métro station – respectively the Gare du Nord (Noordstation), Gare Centrale (Centraal Station) and Gare du Midi (Zuidstation).

From the heights of the Upper Town , the Francophile ruling class long kept a beady eye on the proletarians down below, and it was here they built their palaces and mansions, churches and parks. Political power is no longer concentrated hereabouts, but the wide avenues and grand architecture of this aristocratic quarter – the bulk of which dates from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – have survived pretty much intact, lending a stately, dignified feel that’s markedly different from the bustle of the Lower Town.

The Lower Town ends and the Upper Town begins at the foot of the sharp slope which runs north to south from one end of the city centre to the other, its course marked – in general terms at least – by a wide boulevard that’s variously named Berlaimont, L’Impératrice and L’Empereur. This slope is home to the city’s cathedral , but otherwise is little more than an obstacle to be climbed by a series of stairways. Among the latter, the most frequently used are the covered walkway running through the Galerie Ravenstein shopping arcade behind the Gare Centrale, and the open-air stairway that climbs up through the stodgy, modern buildings of the so-called Mont des Arts . Léopold II gave the area its name in anticipation of a fine art museum he intended to build, but the project was never completed, and the land was only properly built upon in the 1950s.

Above the rigorous layout of the Mont des Arts lie the rue Royale and rue de la Régence , which together make up the Upper Town’s spine, a suitably smart location for the outstanding Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts , the pick of Belgium’s many fine art collections, the surprisingly low-key Palais Royal , and the entertaining Musée des Instruments de Musique ( MIM ). Further south, rue de la Régence soon leads to the well-heeled Sablon neighbourhood, whose antique shops and chic bars and cafés fan out from the medieval church of Notre Dame du Sablon . Beyond this is the monstrous Palais de Justice , traditionally one of the city’s most disliked buildings.

Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts

On the edge of place Royale, the Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts ( w www.fine-arts-museum.be ) holds Belgium’s most satisfying all-round collection of fine art, a vast hoard that is exhibited in three interconnected museums, one displaying modern art from the nineteenth century onwards, a second devoted to René Magritte, and a third to older works. Finding your way around is made easy by the English-language, colour-coded museum plan issued at the information desk behind the entrance. The museum also hosts a prestigious programme of temporary exhibitions (colour-coded red on the museum plan) for which a supplementary admission fee is usually required.

Musée d’Art Ancien

In the Musée d’Art Ancien , the blue area displays paintings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including the Flemish primitives and the Bruegels, and the brown area concentrates on paintings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the collection of Rubens (for which the museum is internationally famous) as a particular highlight.

The museum owns several paintings by Rogier van der Weyden (1399–1464), who moved to Brussels from his home town of Tournai (in today’s southern Belgium) in the 1430s, becoming the city’s official painter shortly afterwards. When it came to portraiture, Weyden’s favourite technique was to highlight the features of his subject – and tokens of rank – against a black background. His Portrait of Antoine de Bourgogne is a case in point, with Anthony, the illegitimate son of Philip the Good, casting a haughty, tight-lipped stare to his right while wearing the chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece and clasping an arrow, the emblem of the guild of archers.

Weyden’s contemporary, Leuven-based Dieric Bouts (1410–75) is well represented by the two panels of his Justice of the Emperor Otto . The story was well known: in revenge for refusing her advances, the empress accuses a nobleman of attempting to seduce her. He is executed, but the man’s wife remains convinced of his innocence and subsequently proves her point by means of an ordeal by fire – hence the red-hot iron bar she’s holding. The empress then receives her just desserts, being burnt on the hill in the background.

One of the museum’s most interesting paintings is a copy of Temptations of St Anthony by Hieronymus Bosch (1450–1516); the original is in Lisbon’s Museu Nacional. No one is quite sure who painted this triptych – it may or may not have been one of Bosch’s apprentices – but it was certainly produced in Holland in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. The painting refers to St Anthony, a third-century nobleman who withdrew into the desert, where he endured fifteen years of temptation before settling down into his long stint as a hermit. It was the temptations that interested Bosch – rather than the ascetic steeliness of Anthony – and the central panel has an inconspicuous saint sticking desperately to his prayers surrounded by all manner of fiendish phantoms. The side panels develop the theme – to the right Anthony is tempted by lust and greed, and on the left Anthony’s companions help him back to his shelter after he’s been transported through the skies by weird-looking demons.

Another leading Flemish artist, Quinten Matsys (1465–1530) is well represented by the Triptych of the Holy Kindred . Matsys’ work illustrates a turning point in the development of Low Country painting, and in this triptych, completed in 1509, he abandons the realistic interiors and landscapes of his Flemish predecessors in favour of the grand columns and porticoes of the Renaissance. Each scene is rigorously structured, its characters – all relations of Jesus – assuming lofty, idealized poses.

René Magritte

René Magritte (1898–1967) is easily the most famous of Belgium’s modern artists, his disconcerting, strangely haunting images a familiar part of popular culture. Born in a small town just outside Charleroi, he entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels in 1915, and was a student there until 1920. His appearances were, however, few and far between as he preferred the company of a group of artists and friends fascinated with the Surrealist movement of the 1920s. Their antics were supposed to incorporate a serious intent – the undermining of bourgeois convention – but the surviving home movies of Magritte and his chums fooling around don’t appear very revolutionary today.

Initially, Magritte worked in a broadly Cubist manner, but in 1925, influenced by the Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico, he switched over to Surrealism and almost immediately stumbled upon the themes and images that would preoccupy him for decades to come. His work incorporated startling comparisons between the ordinary and the extraordinary, with the occasional erotic element thrown in. Favourite images included men in bowler hats, metamorphic figures, enormous rocks floating in the sky, tubas, fishes with human legs, bilboquets (the cup and ball game), and juxtapositions of night and day – one part of the canvas lit by artificial light, the other basking in full sunlight. He also dabbled in word paintings, mislabelling familiar forms to illustrate (or expose) the arbitrariness of linguistic signs. His canvases were devoid of emotion, deadpan images that were easy to recognize but perplexing because of their setting – perhaps most famously, the man in the suit with a bowler hat and an apple for a face.

He broke with this characteristic style on two occasions, once during the war – in despair over the Nazi occupation – and again in 1948, to revenge long years of neglect by the French artistic establishment. Hundreds had turned up to see Magritte’s first Paris exhibition , but were confronted with crass and crude paintings of childlike simplicity. These so-called Vache paintings created a furore, and Magritte beat a hasty artistic retreat behind a smokescreen of self-justification. These two experiments alienated Magritte from most of the other Surrealists, but this was of little consequence as he was picked up and popularized by an American art dealer, Alexander Iolas, who made him very rich and very famous.

Magritte and his family lived in Jette, a suburb of Brussels, until the late 1950s, and the house is now the Musée René Magritte . He died in 1967, shortly after a major retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York confirmed his reputation as one of the great artists of the twentieth century.

Discover more places in Belgium

• Travel Guide Morocco
• Travel Guide Namibia
• Travel Guide South Africa
• Travel Guide China
• Travel Guide India
• Travel Guide Indonesia
• Travel Guide Japan
• Travel Guide Laos
• Travel Guide Malaysia
• Travel Guide Myanmar (Burma)
• Travel Guide Nepal
• Travel Guide Philippines
• Travel Guide Singapore
• Travel Guide South Korea
• Travel Guide Sri Lanka
• Travel Guide Taiwan
• Travel Guide Thailand
• Travel Guide Australia
• Travel Guide Fiji
• Travel Guide New Zealand
• Travel Guide Belize
• Costa Rica Travel Guide
• Travel Guide Cuba
• Travel Guide Guatemala
• Travel Guide Honduras
• Travel Guide Jamaica
• Travel Guide Nicaragua
• Travel Guide Panama
• Travel Guide Puerto Rico
• Travel Guide Trinidad and Tobago
• Travel Guide Albania
• Travel Guide Austria
• Travel Guide Belgium
• Travel Guide Bosnia-Herzegovina
• Travel Guide Bulgaria
• Travel Guide Cyprus
• Travel Guide Czechia (Czech Republic)
• Travel Guide Denmark
• Travel Guide England
• Travel Guide Estonia
• Travel Guide Finland
• Travel Guide France
• Travel Guide Germany
• Travel Guide Greece
• Travel Guide Hungary
• Iceland Travel Guide

The Rough Guides to Belgium and related travel guides

In-depth, easy-to-use travel guides filled with expert advice.

Find even more inspiration here

Planning your own trip? Prepare for your trip

Use Rough Guides' trusted partners for great rates

written by Rough Guides Editors

updated 30.04.2021

Ready to travel and discover Belgium?

Get support from our local experts for stress-free planning & worry-free travels.

• Where to stay
• Travel advice

Guides Brussels Belgium

Guides Brussels Belgium is an association of 40 enthusiastic guides founded in 1969.

We offer guided tours in 11 different languages: English - French - Dutch - German - Italian - Spanish - Portuguese - Greek - Russian - Polish - Japanese.

You can book us for visits in the whole of Belgium: Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Waterloo to name a few. We're the perfect partner to discover these beautiful cities during your stay in Belgium.

More information?

A standard tour (up to a maximum of 3 hours) costs €187 per guide. A full day visiting 1 city (maximum 9 hours: 8 hours guided tour + 1 hour lunch time) costs €363. A full day visiting 2 cities (maximum 10 hours: 9 hours guided tour + 1 hour lunch time) costs €407.

Each group is limited to a maximum of 25 people, unless mentioned differently. If your party is larger then an additional guide will be booked, for the comfort of the group. In that case you can opt to have groups in different languages.

There are no extra charges for guided tours during the weekends.

Guided tours

Explore our standard guided tours on this website (navigation at the top of this page).

Or, if you want a personalized guided tour, ask for a quotation.

You may choose any meeting point if the city center, only the most-commonly used ones are listed. Please mention your choice when booking your tour (for example: your restaurant, your hotel, your office, …).

Feel free to contact us for more information.

• Destinations

Free tours in Brussels

• Tours in Brussels

Walking Brussels in a day

Brussels is the capital of Belgium and one of the most exciting cities to visit in Europe. With places like the Royal Palace, Cinquantenaire, and Cathedral of St, Michael and St. Gudula, there is something for everyone. One day can be spent visiting museums like Royal Museum of Fine Arts and Royal Museum of Art and History and the next can be hopping around the centre to admire Grand Place, Brussels Town Hall, and Manneken Pis, a famous bronze statue depicting a boy peeing into the fountain.

Mini Europe, a unique experience, allows you to travel around a model of the Old Continent and learn about its towns in just a couple of hours. And it’s perfectly located beside the top attraction of Brussels: Atomium. A symbol of the city, it carries 8 spheres of different heights with the top sphere (92m) dedicated to beautiful panoramic views of the city and a restaurant. And not to be missed is the LED light show held every evening!

Take a free walking tour from Freetour.com and let the guides show you around their city to give you unique perspectives of the sights and culinary scene. Besides Belgium’s well-known waffles, chocolate, and french fries, there are several traditional dishes to indulge in with both Belgium and French influences. Gourmet or not, you’re in for a real treat at any of the restaurants, cafes, and bars, especially when accompanied by local Belgium beer.

• Join Freetour
• Provider Sign In
• Affiliate Program
• Security & Privacy
• Terms & Legal
• Cookie policy
• Freetour Awards
• Ratings & Reviews powered by

Planning to visit Brussels? We can help you! At introducingbrussels.com, you will find updated information about the top attractions , where to stay , or the best places to eat and drink .

Brussels Travel Guide

• General Information
• Top Attractions
• Getting to Brussels
• Where to Eat
• Where to Stay
• Two Day Itinerary

If you’re planning a trip to Brussels the first things you'll want to read about are the city’s top attractions, where to stay, and the general prices of hotels and restaurants, among other useful information . To make it as easy as possible for you, Civitatis offers you this travel guide to Brussels and the country's nearby cities so you make the most of your holidays.

Why visit Brussels?

You'd like to discover Brussels because you want to try the best chocolate and beer in the world  because you’ve found a very cheap plane ticket, you’ve heard great things about the city, you're a fan of moules-frites (mussels and chips) or simply because you have always wanted to see the city’s most important symbol: The Manneken Piss .

Brussels is the capital of Belgium and is also considered the principal city of the European Union. It has all the characteristics of a metropolis, but at the same time is a small tranquil city. It has extremely modern neighborhoods that contrast with its renowned Art Deco buildings, and the streets of Brussels are packed with charm and history and make for a great getaway.

Any excuse is good to organize a holiday in Brussels , whether it be for 2 days, a week or longer. This city offers good food, interesting museums, and a selection of offbeat attractions, which will not leave you indifferent.

How to organize your trip?

Organizing your travel in advance is key to making the most of your holiday in Belgium's capital . We recommend reading first a little about the city’s history and reading our article on the most frequently asked questions about Brussels , such as travel advice, the languages spoken in Belgium, and its healthcare system. Followed by discovering Brussels’ top attractions and museums .   

Book the hotel in advance!

If you still don't have accommodation booked, we recommend you visit our search engine where you’ll find all types of hotels, hostels, and apartments with the best rates guaranteed . You can get up to 75% off the price you would pay directly at the hotel.

• Hotels in Brussels – Book online for the best rates guaranteed.

top activities

Bruges and Ghent Day Trip On this Bruges and Ghent day trip from Brussels , we'll visit these two great jewels of Belgium. Two must-see cities for any traveller!

Luxembourg and Dinant Full-Day Trip Set off on a day trip to Luxembourg, one of the less-known cities of Europe and on your way back to Brussels stopping at Les Ardennes and the city of Dinant.

Bruges Day Trip Known as “The Venice of the North”, Bruges is one of the most picturesque medieval towns in Europe. Explore it with an English-speaking guide.

On this excursion to Keukenhof and Delft , we'll travel to the Netherlands to enjoy the colorful Dutch spring and see sprawling fields of beautiful tulips.

Brussels Free Walking Tour Join us on a captivating journey through the vibrant streets of Brussels . Let's explore its rich history, stunning architecture, and unique cultural treasures .

Day Trip to Antwerp and Ghent On this day trip from Brussels you'll get to see two of the most beautiful cities in the Belgian region of Flanders: Antwerp and Ghent .

Private City Tour of Brussels Book our private guided tour of Brussels and discover the best of the capital of the European Union with an expert English-speaking guide . You'll love it!

Brussels Card The Brussels Card offers free admission to 49 museums in Brussels, as well as discounts for numerous guided tours, attractions, restaurants, stores and bars!  

Amsterdam Day Trip Travel from to Amsterdam on a 12-hour day trip and explore the city’s canals and tilted houses accompanied by an expert English-speaking guide.

Ghent Day Trip Explore the UNESCO World Heritage city of Ghent & its historic center on this day trip from Brussels accompanied by an English-speaking guide.

Belgian Chocolate & Beer Tasting Tour Sweeten your visit to the Belgian capital on this chocolate & beer tour of Brussels, which includes a tasting of 3 cocoa products & 3 beverages.

Brussels Comic Tour Belgium is spelled with a b for "bandé dessinée ", the French word for Ninth Art . In this comic tour of Brussels  we'll see various urban vignettes .

Antwerp Day Trip Enjoy a trip from Brussels to Antwerp: The Diamond Capital of the World, and join a guided tour of this trendy medieval city and hometown of Peter Paul Rubens.

Belgian Chocolate Workshop at Choco Story Become a master chef for a day & learn how to make  Belgian chocolates with the help of a professional chocolate maker with this workshop in Brussels.

Brussels Hop On Hop Off Bus The Brussels Hop On Hop Off Bus  is the best option for getting to know the main sights around the Belgian capital in a comfortable and entertaining way.

Alternative Brussels Free Walking Tour Forget about chocolate, waffles and beer and set off on an alternative tour of Brussels where you will discover what makes the capital of Belgium truly unique .

Mini-Europe Ticket Discover fabulous miniatures of the most famous monuments in Europe when you buy this ticket for the amazing Mini-Europe Park in Brussels .

Choco Story Brussels Learn about the history of cocoa at Choco Story, the Chocolate Museum in Brussels. The ticket also includes a tasting of the museum's irresistible products.

Brussels Pub Crawl If you want to  go out partying in the Belgian Capital  don't miss this  Pub Crawl in Brussels . You'll meet loads of people and have lots of fun!

Hard Rock Cafe Lunch or Dinner Enjoy American-style music and delicious food with the Hard Rock Cafe Lunch or Dinner. Have fun at the restaurant in the Belgian capital at the Grand Place.

Brussels Open-Top Bus Tour Discover Brussels' most iconic landmarks  and areas on this panoramic tour of the city aboard a comfortable open-top bus ! 

Belgian Beer Tour Embark on a fascinating  tour of Brussels , where we'll delve into the captivating world of beer , exploring the art of brewing that makes Belgian beer  so great!

Luxembourg Day Trip Discover the contrasts between the abundant history and modern business centre with this Luxembourg Day Trip. Visit the vibrant city with 170 nationalities.

Art Nouveau Free Guided Tour At the end of the 19th century , a movement emerged that perfectly combined these materials. Be captivated by modernism in Brussels with Art Nouveau Guided Tour .

Train World Ticket Do you want to discover the history of the oldest train network in Europe ? Book your ticket for the Train World museum and travel back in time.

Art Nouveau Pass With the Art Nouveau Pass , you can visit 3 Art Nouveau buildings in Brussels - the undisputed capital of Art Nouveau architecture.

Private Tour: Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp Surrender to the charm of Belgium's three most beautiful cities: Ghent, Bruges and Antwerp on a private tour from Brussels with an English-speaking guide.

Brussels Chocolate, Beer and French Fries Tour Experience an authentic gourmet experience on our chocolate, beer and french fries tour in Brussels. Enjoy some of the best treats Belgium has to offer.

Flanders Fields Tour Join us and explore  one of the most  important scenes from the First World War in Belgium on this  tour to Flanders Fields in Brussels .

Belgian Beer World Ticket If you're in Brussels, don't miss the chance to uncover the secrets of Belgian brewing traditions with a ticket to Belgian Beer World . Plus, enjoy a tasting!

Historic Brussels: The Origins of the City Adventure Quest On this  Historical  Brussels: The Origins of the City   Adventure Quest , you'll solve riddles and follow clues while touring the city. Discover Brussels' secrets!

Free Tour of the European Quarter In this free tour of the European Quarter , we'll visit one of the most elegant areas in Brussels . Join us to discover the contrasts in the Belgian capital.

Brussels Christmas Bus Tour Immerse yourself in the magic of the holiday season on this Christmas Bus Tour through Brussels , turning the Belgian capital into a winter wonderland!

Introducingbeussels.com has been created for travelers like you, by travelers like you, based on personal experiences. We'll try to help you to plan your trip as comprehensively as possible, saving money and getting to know some of the little tricks to get the most out of your time.

The information contained in this guide has been updated in December 2022 . If you see any errors or anything which should be changed, we would be happy to hear from you .

Guided tours FLE & NT2

Primary Education

Vous avez prévu de partir à Bruxelles ? Nous pouvons vous aider ! Sur Visitons Bruxelles.com, vous trouverez toutes sortes d' informations actualisées sur que voir , où dormir ou encore sur les meilleurs quartiers où manger .

Guide de Bruxelles

• Informations
• Comment s'y rendre
• Bruxelles en 48 heures

Si vous découvrez ce guide, c’est que vous êtes très probablement en train de planifier votre voyage à Bruxelles. Si c’est le cas, vous aurez très certainement de nombreuses questions qui vous viennent à l’esprit au moment de préparer votre séjour en Belgique . Afin de vous faciliter la tâche, Civitatis  vous offre un guide touristique contenant toutes les informations dont vous avez besoin pour profiter au maximum de votre voyage.

Pourquoi visiter Bruxelles ?

Parce que l’on y mange le meilleur chocolat et que l’on y boit les meilleures bières au monde  ; parce que c’est une ville si proche de la France et que les vols sont presque donnés ; parce qu'on vous a parlé en bien de cette ville ; parce que vous aimez les moules ou parce que vous avez toujours voulu découvrir le Manneken Pis , ce petit bonhomme effronté qui est le symbole de la ville.

Bruxelles est non seulement la capitale belge mais également la capitale européenne. Cette ville réunit les caractéristiques d’une grande ville avec le charme des petites villes plus tranquilles.  Modernes avec une touche classique, les rues de Bruxelles sont empreintes de charme et d’histoire .

N’importe quelle excuse est bonne pour faire un saut chez nos voisins les Bruxellois !

Comment organiser son voyage ?

Pour que votre voyage à Bruxelles soit parfait, il faut être bien organisés . Afin de préparer au mieux votre séjour, nous vous conseillons de commencer par découvrir l’histoire de la ville et lire notre section sur les informations pratiques  ; vous pourrez ensuite connaître les quartiers et les lieux importants de la ville ainsi que ses musées .

N’attendez pas de réserver votre hôtel au dernier moment !

En utilisant notre moteur de recherche , vous pourrez réserver des hôtels de toutes catégories aux meilleurs prix garantis . Vous pourrez bénéficier de remises allant jusqu’à 75% et paierez une fois arrivés à l’hôtel.

• Hôtels à Bruxelles – Réservation en ligne au prix minimum garanti.

top activités

Excursion à Bruges Connue comme la Venise du Nord, Bruges est l'une des villes médiévales les plus fascinantes d'Europe . Découvrez-la avec un guide francophone expert !

Free tour dans Bruxelles Découvrez les plus beaux monuments de Bruxelles avec cette visite gratuite et apprenez-en plus sur l’Art Nouveau, le chocolat et la bière belge.

Brussels Card La Brussels Card inclut l’ accès gratuit à 49 musées et monuments de Bruxelles avec d’importantes réductions dans certains magasins et restaurants.

Visite avec dégustation de chocolats, bière et frites dans Bruxelles Vivez une expérience gastronomique authentique grâce à cette visite avec dégustation de chocolats, bière et frites dans Bruxelles . Un vrai régal !

Bus touristique de Bruxelles Le bus touristique de Bruxelles est la meilleure option pour découvrir les principaux sites de la ville en respectant l'environnement .

Atelier de chocolat à Choco Story Lors de cet atelier sur le chocolat belge , apprenez à fabriquer différentes confiseries à Choco Story , un musée bruxellois populaire consacré au cacao.

Excursion à Anvers Découvrez Anvers, la capitale du diamant et l'une des cités médiévales les plus fascinantes de Belgique avec cette excursion en train depuis Bruxelles.

Billet pour le Choco Story Découvrez l'histoire du cacao en allant au Choco Story, le Musée du Chocolat de Bruxelles . Le billet comprend également une délicieuse dégustation !

Excursion à Delft et au parc de Keukenhof Laissez vous charmer par la Hollande avec cette excursion à Delft et Keukenhof depuis Bruxelles . De magnifiques tulipes colorées vous attendent !

Billet pour le Parc Mini-Europe Avec ce billet pour la Mini-Europe à Bruxelles , vous visiterez un parc où les monuments les plus célèbres d'Europe sont reproduits en miniature .

Excursion d'une journée à Amsterdam Partez en excursion à Amsterdam une journée et découvrez les jolis canaux et les maisons inclinées, ainsi que tous les lieux incontournables !

Excursion à Luxembourg et Dinant Grâce à cette visite, vous découvrirez Luxembourg, une ville européenne surprenante . En rentrant à Bruxelles, vous passerez par les Ardennes et Dinant.

Hard Rock Café de Bruxelles sans file d'attente Profitez de la musique et de la cuisine à l'américaine au Hard Rock Café Bruxelles , un restaurant populaire sur la célèbre Grand Place.

Free tour à la découverte de l'Art Nouveau Au XIXᵉ siècle émerge un mouvement architectural hors-norme.  Venez découvrir la richesse de l'Art Nouveau à Bruxelles lors de ce free tour .

Art Nouveau Pass Grâce à l' Art Nouveau Pass , visitez trois bâtiments Art Nouveau de Bruxelles , l'une des capitales européennes où ce style architectural est le plus présent .

Free tour dans la Bruxelles insolite et secrète Lors de ce free tour alternatif dans Bruxelles , visitez les quartiers les moins touristiques de la capitale belge , et découvrez le mode de vie des habitants.

Visite privée dans Bruxelles. À vous de choisir ! Lors de votre visite privée, vous serez accompagné d'un guide pour découvrir Bruxelles en exclusivité en famille ou entre amis. Vous allez adorer !

Billet pour le musée Train World de Bruxelles Découvrez l'histoire du plus ancien réseau ferroviaire d'Europe en réservant votre billet pour le musée du train de Bruxelles .

Excursion à Bruges et à Gand Gand et Bruges sont 2 des villes médiévales les mieux conservées d'Europe. Visitez les deux joyaux de la Belgique en une seule journée depuis Bruxelles .

Dégustation de bière belge dans Bruxelles Avec ce parcours dégustation, vous découvrirez le monde de la bière belge de la meilleure des façons, en visitant différentes brasseries de la capitale.

Excursion à Gand Découvrez Gand, une charmante ville au centre médiéval encore remarquablement conservé . Cette excursion au départ de Bruxelles est incontournable !

Visite à la découverte de la bande dessinée Bruxelles commence par le B de bande dessinée, le neuvième art. Découvrez les vignettes urbaines de la capitale belge et parcourez ses rues !

Excursion sur les champs de bataille des Flandres Découvrez l'une des scènes les plus importantes de la Première Guerre mondiale en Belgique lors de cette excursion sur les champs de bataille des Flandres.

Pub Crawl : tournée des bars à Bruxelles ! Vous souhaitez faire la fête dans la capitale belge ? Rencontrez de nouvelles personnes et passez un bon moment avec cette tournée des bars à Bruxelles  !

Excursion privée au départ de Bruxelles Laissez-vous séduire par le charme des trois plus jolies villes de Belgique : Gand, Bruges et Anvers , avec un guide privé rien que pour vous et vos proches.

Bus de Noël à Bruxelles Prévoyez du temps dans votre emploi du temps pour admirer les décorations de l'Avent de la capitale belge à bord du bus de Noël de Bruxelles.

Votre guide de Bruxelles

Le guide touristique Visitons Bruxelles est le résultat d’expériences personnelles de voyageurs comme vous. Tout au long de ce guide, nous nous efforcerons de vous aider à planifier au mieux votre séjour, en économisant un maximum et en vous révélant les astuces les plus intéressantes pour utiliser au mieux votre temps .

Les informations et les données pratiques ont été actualisées en décembre 2022 . Si vous détectez une erreur ou jugez que nous devrions apporter des modifications, n’hésitez pas à nous contacter.

Nos guides touristiques

• et bien plus encore

• Work & Careers
• Life & Arts

Become an FT subscriber

Try unlimited access Only $1 for 4 weeks

Then $75 per month. Complete digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Cancel anytime during your trial.

• Global news & analysis
• Expert opinion
• Special features
• FirstFT newsletter
• Videos & Podcasts
• Android & iOS app
• FT Edit app
• 10 gift articles per month

Explore more offers.

Standard digital.

• FT Digital Edition

Premium Digital

Print + premium digital, weekend print + standard digital, weekend print + premium digital.

Essential digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Pay a year upfront and save 20%.

• Global news & analysis
• Exclusive FT analysis
• FT App on Android & iOS
• FirstFT: the day's biggest stories
• 20+ curated newsletters
• Follow topics & set alerts with myFT
• FT Videos & Podcasts
• 20 monthly gift articles to share
• Lex: FT's flagship investment column
• 15+ Premium newsletters by leading experts
• FT Digital Edition: our digitised print edition
• Weekday Print Edition
• Videos & Podcasts
• Premium newsletters
• 10 additional gift articles per month
• FT Weekend Print delivery
• Everything in Standard Digital
• Everything in Premium Digital

Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders. Pay a year upfront and save 20%.

• 10 monthly gift articles to share
• Everything in Print

Terms & Conditions apply

Explore our full range of subscriptions.

Why the ft.

See why over a million readers pay to read the Financial Times.

International Edition

Guided tours that showcase Brussels’ heritage

09 March 2022

Is it your first time in Brussels? Or are you looking to get to know the city’s heritage better? The best way to discover or rediscover Brussels’ classics and must-sees is with a guided tour. Original tours, packed with juicy anecdotes, take you past places that are key parts of our capital's history.

Gothic grandeur

Feast your eyes on the grandeur of Brussels' Grand-Place , with its glorious town hall and countless guild houses. The colourful umbrellas of the passionate guides will lead you through the glorious history of this stunning world heritage site . There's a guided tour almost every hour. It's ideal for last-minute decisions... (psst: don't forget a little tip!). 

With its richly decorated facade and impressive tower, the City of Brussels' Town Hall is one of the most beautiful buildings in the country. But did you know that the inside is also worth a visit? On Wednesdays and Sundays , an experienced guide will escort you through the many halls and galleries , interspersed with anecdotes from Brussels city politics.

Can't get enough of cross-ribbed vaults and Brabant Gothic architecture ? Then walk up the Treurberg hill for a guided tour of the Cathedral of Saint Michael and Saint Gudula . The free tour of the cathedral is the perfect opportunity to learn more about the history of this remarkable religious building. If you're not afraid of heights and a bit of exercise you can even take a tour of the cathedral's towers . Be advised that a tour of the towers must be requested at least two weeks in advance and costs €10 per person.

Brussels' Palace of Justice is a real eye-catching jewel of Brussels' heritage. It's the largest courthouse in the world . This gigantic building, designed by Joseph Poelaert, has a usable area of 40,000m². The dome is 100 metres high and there are more than 250 rooms, including 27 impressive courtrooms! That's bigger than Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. A visit is, therefore, a must.

By tram, bus or horse-drawn carriage

Sightseeing in Brussels with a guide on board? The electric hop-on-hop-off Tootbus takes you from the Atomium to the Grand-Place and from the Mont des Arts to the European Quarter. Brussels City Tours also offer tour bus rides .

Prefer a mode of transport with a touch of historical flair? Hop on board the Brussels Tourist Tramway for a four-hour vintage tram ride that takes you past Brussels heritage sites. Or let yourself be driven around the capital a horse-drawn carriage . The carriages are available every day of the week on rue Charles Buls .

Guided tours through a patchwork of architectural styles

From Art Nouveau, Art Deco, typically Brussels eclecticism and modernism to contemporary architecture... Brussels’ urban landscape is a patchwork of architectural styles. Stroll along the squares and stately avenues with a guide, or take a peek behind the magnificent facades on an exclusive guided tour of private residences with explore.brussels .

Die-hard architecture fans are in for a treat with no less than three architecture festivals : the  Brussels Art Nouveau & Art Deco (BANAD) Festival , the  Brussels Biennale of Eclectic Architecture (BBEA) and the  Brussels Biennalle - Neoclassic . 

Guided tours: architectural heritage

City run art nouveau.

Discover Art Nouveau while jogging at your ease!

Capital of Belgium and Europe, Brussels is also the capital of ... Art Nouveau! Join us on a 9 km tour to discover some buildings representative of this current architecture but also other monuments of the commune of Saint-Gilles. You do not have to be a great athlete to participate: this run is accessible for « start to runners » as well.The route may be adapted to your wishes. All year round, by reservation.

Quartier Porte de Hal

Saint-Gilles

Guided tours

Art Nouveau, from the Spring to the Ponds

The tour “Art Nouveau, from the Spring to the Ponds” takes you to the heart of Ixelles, from the Defacqz district to the Ixelles ponds, to discover the architects of the first and second generation of Art Nouveau.

The Defacqz district is home to several works by major architects and shows the first impulses of Art Nouveau architecture in Brussels. After a few stops around rue Defacqz and avenue Louise, the tour takes you to the peaceful district of Ixelles ponds to discover other architectural treasures. Discover unsuspected jewels in neighborhoods crossed every day by thousands of people and which have seen, despite the urban (r)evolutions, their beauty and their wealth preserved! WHAT ARE YOU GONNA SEE ? The tour “Art Nouveau, from the Spring to the Ponds” takes you to the heart of Ixelles, from the Defacqz district to the Ixelles ponds, to discover the architects of the first and second generation of Art Nouveau. Let us tell you the urban history of these neighborhoods next to Avenue Louise and Abbaye de La Cambre by (re-)discovering many houses and private mansions. On the program of the walk, among others… – Tassel Hotel, by Victor Horta ; – Solvay Hotel, by Victor Horta; – Otlet Hotel, by Octave van Rysselberghe and Henry Van de Velde; – Ciamberlani Hotel, by Paul Hankar; – Other works by Albert Roosenboom, Ernest Delune, Ernest Blerot ; – But also many small stories and anecdotes! We will not go into the houses and mansions (most of the are occupied), but photographic supports are provided to give you a better idea of the interior of the buildings. Because Art Nouveau is a “Total Art” which certainly does not stop at the facades! PRACTICAL INFO Regular tours in english and french : Cost : Voluntary* Duration : About 2 hours Group max : 25 people (less in Corona period) Meeting point : Avenue Louise 149 – 1000 Bruxelles (next to Defacqz tram stop) This tour takes place every other sunday. check our website to make sure it takes place ;-) Private tour on demand in english or french

Original guided tour designed and run by the Brussels By Foot independant guides

Defacqz Tram Stop

Art Nouveau dans le Quartier des Squares

Brussels by Foot

Musical monuments

Brussels is bursting with musical talent that loves to sing its praises. Think of icons like Stromae and Angèle. But the capital's master singer-songwriter is, without doubt,  Jacques Brel.

Armed with an audio guide , discover Brel's beloved Brussels through songs, interviews, testimonies and anecdotes on the Brel in Brussels walks. You'll be introduced to his youth, his private life and his life as an artist. Let yourself be guided to all the places where his voice echoes to this day.

Guided tours: musical heritage

With brel in brussels - walking tour.

Brel Foundation

Brussels heritage: monuments and gastronomy

Follow the guide to Brussels' iconic monuments: the Grand-Place, the Royal Saint Hubert Galleries and the legendary Manneken-Pis. Along the narrow streets, cafes, restaurants and typical taverns serve Brussels specialities : mussels, chips, chocolate... Brussels also boast a fantastic intangible heritage , with our beer culture being its most effervescent example. Treat yourself!

Guided tours: gastronomic heritage

Factory visit and demonstration at planète chocolat.

Our guests learn all about the various stages in the production of pralines and caraques , involving a lot of humour and passion, and not forgetting the deliciious degustation of our artisan pralines and our own hot chocolate. Duration: 45 min - 60 min (depends on the questions of the visitors)

Demonstrations for individuals are arranged on Saturdays at 4:00 PM and on Sundays at 3:00 PM and are held in English and in French. You find us in the heart of Brussels beetween the popular Manneken Pis and the Grand Place.

A master chocolate maker from Planète Chocolat

Planète Chocolat

Belgian Chocolate Village

A new chocolate museum opened its doors on September 20th 2014 in Brussels on the former Victoria chocolate works. Sited near the Koekelberg Basilica, the Belgian Chocolate Village is one of the largest museums in Europe to be dedicated to chocolate.

The museum tour route displays and explains the stages of the manufacture of chocolate, its uses, its history, its benefits, its economics and its diversity. It appeals to all the visitors' senses. At the heart of the museum there is a unique tropical greenhouse. You can also participate at chocolate workshops (on reservation - 15 days before) and you can buy chocolate in our shop.

Brussels Beer Bus

Brussels and its beers with the Brussels Beer Bus

Go back in time by boarding an ambulance 1940-45 completely transformed into a rolling museum of the unusual and old Brussels. Let yourself be guided by a Brussels guide through the streets and monuments of our capital and have fun with his anecdotes. While visiting, taste Brussels beers "on board" or at a local brewery. An experience for those who want to discover unusual Brussels and off the beaten track. Bookings on our website www.brusselsbeerbus.com

Local guides