Things to do
12-
Atomium
Nine steel spheres forming an iron crystal magnified one hundred and sixty-five billion times, built for the 1958 world's fair and meant to last six months. Escalators and a lift connect six of them, with exhibitions inside and a view from the top. The panels were renewed in 2006 and the original aluminium was sold off as souvenirs.
-
Belgisch Stripcentrum
Victor Horta built this as a fabric warehouse in 1906, and since 1989 it has held the national comic-strip collection: Tintin, the Smurfs, Lucky Luke and a great deal that never reached English. The building is worth the ticket on its own. Painted murals of comic panels are scattered across the city outside.
-
Grote Markt
French artillery flattened this square in 1695 and the guilds rebuilt it within five years, each house competing in gilded baroque, which is why it reads as one design. A carpet of begonias covers it for four days every other August. It is enclosed on all four sides, so the effect on walking in is deliberate.
-
Jubelpark
Leopold II laid this out for the fiftieth anniversary of independence in 1880 and paid for it with Congo money, which the museums inside now say. A triumphal arcade closes the eastern end. Three collections sit under it: art and history, the army, and Autoworld, which is a large motor collection in an iron hall.
-
Justitiepaleis van Brussel
The largest building put up anywhere in the nineteenth century, covering more ground than St Peter's, for which a whole working-class quarter was demolished and the architect was cursed by name. It has been under scaffolding since 1984, long enough for the scaffolding itself to be listed. The terrace beside it gives the city.
-
Kathedraal van Sint-Michiel en Sint-Goedele
Three hundred years in the building, from 1226, with two square western towers that were never given spires and sixteenth-century glass in the transepts. Romanesque foundations of the earlier church are open in the crypt. Royal weddings and funerals happen here and it stands on the slope between the upper and lower towns.
-
Koninklijk Paleis van Brussel
The official palace, which the royal family does not live in, open free to visitors for about six weeks from late July while the king is away. One room has a ceiling covered in the wing cases of a million and a half jewel beetles, an installation by Jan Fabre from 2002. The rest is state rooms.
-
Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België
Four museums on one site: old masters with Bruegel's fall of Icarus and a room of Rubens, the fin-de-siècle collection, the Magritte museum over five floors, and modern art in a sunken well. One ticket covers the lot. The Magritte holdings are the largest anywhere and the queue is for them.
-
Koninklijke Sint-Hubertusgalerijen
Glazed shopping arcades of 1847, among the first in Europe and the model for those in Milan and Naples, running two hundred metres under an iron and glass vault. Chocolate shops, a bookshop and a cinema occupy them. Verlaine and Victor Hugo both lodged along here during their exiles.
-
Manneken Pis
A bronze boy of sixty-one centimetres, cast in 1619 and stolen so often that the one on the corner is a copy, urinating into a basin since before anyone recorded why. He owns a wardrobe of over a thousand costumes, kept in a museum nearby and changed on a published schedule. Visitors are routinely surprised by how small he is.
-
Mont des Arts
A formal garden on the slope between the lower town and the royal quarter, cleared for the 1958 fair after fifty years as a building site. Steps climb between the library and the congress centre. From the top the spire of the town hall lines up exactly with the axis, which is the whole design.
-
Muziekinstrumentenmuseum
About twelve hundred instruments shown of eight thousand held, in the Old England building of 1899, an art nouveau department store in black steel and glass. Headphones play each case as the visitor reaches it. Adolphe Sax's own saxophones are here. The rooftop restaurant looks over the lower town for the price of a coffee.