Brussels is more than a 1000 years old. Today the name Brussels stands for an agglomeration of 19 communes forming one of the three Regions of the federal Belgian state; the capital of the Kingdom of Belgium; the headquarters of the French and Flemish Communities. Brussels also has an important international vocation : as the European capital the city is home to the European Commission and to the Council of ministers of the European Union (EU).

Brussels is the bilingual capital of Belgium. This means that both French and Dutch are the official languages of the city. Street names and traffic sings are always in these two languages. Furthermore, it is a cosmopolitan city where many different cultures live together and where different languages can be heard on each street. This liveliness and international flair is, of course, intimately related to its role as a crossroads for all of Europe.

The same variety and contrast can also be found in the different architectural styles that can be found in Brussels, the former capital of the medieval Duchy of Brabant. Gothic cathedrals and churches are next to - and sometimes in stark contrast with - gracious classical facades like the buildings around the Royal Square (Place Royale - Koningsplein), or beautiful art nouveau and art deco houses.

The heart of Brussels and the place to start getting to know the city is the Grand’Place (Grote Markt). This historic market square with its splendid guild houses and the impressive Gothic beauty of the Town Hall, is widely considered to be one of the most beautiful town squares in Europe.
The city of choice for Eurocrats, Brussels is sumptuous, historic and luxuriously cosy. With artistry richer than chocolate, architecture as graceful as its cuisine and diversity frothier than the beer, Brussels is an heirloom of northern culture at its best.

What makes Brussels special? Great seafood in great restaurants, the smell of hot waffles on a cold winter’s day, cafes and pubs that never close, the cosmopolitan but neighbourly feel, forests practically on the doorstep, pheasant and truffles in autumn, comic strips, designer shops…

The city’s character largely mirrors that of Belgium: confident but modest, and rarely striving to impress. For visitors, it’s full of delights - Grand Place, mussels with chips, pralines, uncrowded museums, intimate hotels, Art Nouveau, Horta, Tintin and unbelievable beers.

Area: 161 sq km
Population: 980,000
Country: Belgium
Time Zone: GMT/UTC +1 (Central European Time)
Telephone Area Code: 02; incorporated into local numbers

Orientation

Central Brussels is divided into two main areas, the Lower and Upper Towns. The Lower Town comprises the medieval city centre, built around the imposing Grand Place, a former market square. The area is easy to get around on foot, its cobbled streets leading to popular quarters such as Ilôt Sacré, Ste Catherine, St Géry and Marolles.

The Upper Town, to the southeast, has a vastly different atmosphere. The traditional base of Brussels’ French-speaking elite, it’s home to wide boulevards, major museums, chic shopping areas around Sablon and Ave Louise, and monumental buildings including the Belgian parliament.

Most of Brussels proper is surrounded by a motorway - the Petit Ring - but there are interesting sites beyond the centre. The glass-and-steel EU quarter is bordered by the trendy Ixelles district, known for its many Art Nouveau buildings. To the north, the Domaine Royale is the residence of Belgium’s royal family.

When to Go

Brussels is alluring any time of year. Most visitors arrive between May and September, when the weather is at its best. Unfortunately, the lovely temperate beauty of the place can be undermined by considerable crowds at tourist sites and a scarcity of accommodations.

If you’re considering a weekend visit, Brussels is a particularly attractive option, as the majority of the city’s top-end hotels drop their rates dramatically from Friday to Sunday. Don’t settle for the first price you’re quoted.

From November to March, the weather is often wretched (right around freezing with plenty of slushy precipitation), and the number of tourists falls off dramatically. If you pack the right clothes and keep in mind that the daylight hours will be short, you can make the most of uncrowded museums and markets. And there’s always a cozy cafe where you can escape the cold and rain.

Events

The most prestigious annual event in Brussels is Ommegang, a 16th-century-style procession staged within the illuminated Grand Place in early July. Just as popular is the biennial flower carpet that colours the square in mid-August every second year (even-numbered years). Immerse yourself in music at the annual Brussels Jazz Marathon (last weekend in May). The Grand Place, together with the Sablon and Place Ste Catherine, also host free open-air concerts throughout summer.

Public Holidays
1 Jan - New Year’s Day
Mar/Apr - Easter Monday
1 May - Labour Day
21 Jul - Belgium National Day
15 Aug - Assumption
1 Nov - All Saints’ Day
11 Nov - Armistice Day
25 Dec - Christmas Day

Attractions

Cathédrale des Sts Michel & Gudule

This splendid twin-towered cathedral at Parvis Sainte Gudule is named after Brussels’ male and female patron saints. After years of renovation, it now sits gleaming on the hillside to the north of Gare Centrale.

The rather out-of-the-way location means it is often overlooked - lost between the lower and upper towns and not on any of the paths most visitors tread.

Begun in 1226, the cathedral took some 300 years to build and consequently reveals a blend of styles - from Romanesque through all the stages of Gothic and right up to Renaissance. The interior is light and airy but almost bereft of decoration due to plundering, first by Protestants in the 17th century and later by the French army.

Beautiful stained-glass windows flood the nave with light and the enormous wooden pulpit, depicting Adam and Eve being driven out of Eden by fearsome skeletons, is worth inspecting. In the crypt are the remains of an 11th-century Romanesque chapel.

Grand Place

Brussels’ magnificent central square, Grand Place, boasts the country’s finest baroque guildhalls, popular pavement cafes and intimate restaurants. Hidden at the core of the old town, it’s only revealed as you enter the narrow side alleys surrounding the square, a discreet position that adds to its charm.

The square dates from the 12th century and was once marshland. By the mid-14th century, Brussels was booming and a prosperous market covered not only the Grand Place but also the surrounding streets, as evidenced by names such as Rue au Beurre (Butter St), Rue des Bouchers (Butchers’ St) and Rue du Marché aux Poulets (Chicken Market St).

The city’s increasingly wealthy merchant guilds established headquarters - guildhalls - right in the middle of the milieu. The city added the Hôtel de Ville, cementing the Grand Place’s role as the hub of commercial, political and civic life in Brussels. If you were promoting a jousting tournament or public execution in medieval Belgium, this would have been your A-list venue.

Most of the square’s historic buildings were destroyed in 1695, when France’s King Louis XIV bombed the area for 36 hours. The Hôtel de Ville was the only major building to survive - ironic, considering that it was the primary target - and nearly all the other buildings on Grand Place today are 17th-century replacements. The superb structure of Hôtel de Ville, with its creamy façade covered in stone reliefs and an intricate 100m-high (328ft-high) tower topped by a gilded statue of St Michel, is open for guided tours.

The Grand Place radiates different auras depending on the time of day and season. In the morning, superb guildhouses at the bottom (southern) end glint in the sun; at dusk, the azure sky becomes a vivid backdrop to the illuminated buildings. During the summer a carpet of flowers covers the whole square, and in winter ice-skaters swirl across the transformed cobbled surface.

Manneken Pis

Belgium’s national symbol, the statue known as Manneken Pis, is just a wee boy, literally. This tiny sculpture of a young boy happily taking a leak is sometimes missed because it’s so small, but it is visited, sooner or later, by just about every visitor who goes to Brussels.

The statue’s origins are lost in time: some say he was the son of a nobleman, others say he was a boy who once found an unusual, and risky, way to put out a house fire.

He was first carved in stone, in the mid-14th century, and called ‘Little Julian.’ In 1619 a bronze version was sculpted by Jerôme Duquesnoy, and this is the Manneken Pis we see today.

Whoever the little boy with the big bladder was the people of Brussels have, for centuries, adopted him as a kind of mascot. On various occasions, such as public holidays, they like to dress him up in little costumes, of which more than 650 have been made.

Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique

This museum houses Belgium’s premier collections of ancient and modern art and is particularly well endowed with works by Pieter Breugel the Elder, Rubens and the Belgian Surrealists. Both sections are large and you’ll need a good day here if you want to do them justice.

The Royal Museums of Fine Arts is actually a single museum divided into two sections - the Musée d’Art Ancien and the adjoining Musée d’Art Moderne.

If you plan your visit, you may be able to use the weekly lunchtime concert held in the Musée d’Art Ancien as a break between the two sections; phone the museum beforehand for details.

The best strategy is to buy a plan of the rooms and follow its colour-coded system.

Rue des Bouchers

Leading off from Galeries St Hubert in a lively little quarter known as Ilôt Sacré is the famous Rue des Bouchers. Whether you decide to eat at one of the many seafood restaurants here or not, this pedestrianised cobbled street is a spectacle not to be missed.

Both sides of the street are packed with tables where you can dine throughout the year (overhead heaters supposedly keep frostbite at bay in winter) and hard-sell waiters entice would-be diners with displays of marine delicacies and the odd novelty (singing fish are the latest attention-grabbing devices being used).

Getting There & Away

Brussels Airport(Zaventem)is 14km (9mi) northeast of Brussels. Many international airlines fly here, but more fly into other European cities, so, depending on where you’re coming from, it may be better to fly into Paris, London, Frankfurt or Amsterdam and train or bus it to Brussels. Departure tax is usually included in ticket prices. Belgium is so small that there are no internal flights between cities. A train station on the airport’s lowest level (-1) runs the Airport City Express shuttle train between the airport and Brussels’ three main train stations, Gare du Nord, Gare du Midi and Gare Centrale. The latter is a five-minute walk from the Grand Place. You can also catch bus BZ between the airport and Gare du Nord or catch a taxi from outside the arrivals hall - official taxis have a yellow and blue ‘Taxi’ sign.

Brussels is well connected with most other European and Belgian cities. Gare du Midi is the main train station for international connections: the Eurostar and Thalys fast trains stop here. Euroline’s main bus depot is next to Gare du Nord, where you can book buses between Brussels and the rest of Europe, Scandinavia and the UK. Buses aren’t necessarily the cheapest option however so shop around. Driving is always an option - Belgium’s motorway system is excellent - but beware impatient and agressive local drivers! Cycling from other parts of Belgium is possible, but you will need to be intrepid - Brussels doesn’t have many cycle paths. There are a variety of ferry options, direct from the UK or via Calais in France.

Brussels three main train stations are Gare Centrale (Central Station), Gare du Midi (South Station), and Gare du Nord (North Station). The recently renovated Gare du Midi is the main station for international connections: the Eurostar and Thalys fast trains stop here. Most other international trains stop at both Gare du Nord and Gare du Midi while some also stop at Gare Centrale.
Getting Around

Brussels’ modern and efficient public transportation system includes the metro, trams, premetro (trams that go underground for part of their journey) and buses, all run by the Société des Transports Intercommunaux de Bruxelles (STIB in French, MIVB in Flemish). Tickets are available at metro stations, STIB kiosks, some newsagents and on buses and trams. You can purchase single-trip tickets, five/ten-journey tickets or day passes. Metro stations are marked by rectangular signs with a white ‘M’ on a blue background. Tram and bus stops have red and white signs. There’s no central hub for buses, so you’ll want to pick up the STIB’s free transportation map. Premetro trams run mainly between Gare du Nord and Gare du Midi. Trains are of minimal use within Brussels for visitors, except for getting to the airport. There are car rental companies at Gare du Midi, Zaventem airport and around the city; the latter offer the cheapest prices. Driving in Brussels is not for the lily-livered - think aggressive drivers, potholes, cut-throat traffic loops and parking hassles. Taxis are metered and expensive; the tax and tips are figured into the meter price. Generally, you’ll find taxis at all three major train stations, around the Grand Place and at place Stéphanie on Ave Louise. You can also call for a taxi from anywhere in the city.

Trains are of minimal use for getting around in Brussels. For visitors, their primary role is getting between the city centre and Brussels National Airport.

As there’s no central transport hub for buses or trams, working out where to jump on is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Pick up the STIB/MIVB’s free transport map to help find your way around. Tram and bus stops have red-and-white signs. Premetro trams run mainly between Gare du Nord and Gare du Midi, travelling underneath the ruler-straight boulevard known consecutively as Adolphe Max/Anspach/Maurice Lemonnier.

Brussels’ metro system opened in 1965. Metro stations are marked by signs with a white ‘M’ on a blue background. There are three lines: Line 1A goes from Roi Baudouin station to Herrmann-Debroux; Line 1B runs from Erasme to Stockel; and Line 2 is a loop that joins Simonis with Clémenceau, basically following the Petit Ring. There’s a train roughly every 10 or 15 minutes. Keep an eye out for artworks while in the metro stations.

Driving in Brussels can be test of anyone’s patience. The slightest hiccup on either ring road brings traffic to a grinding halt, and don’t even consider leaving by car on Friday afternoon unless you’re into heavy congestion.

Parking poses the usual problems. Signs saying betalend parkeren/stationnement payant mean that it’s paid street parking. Green ticket machines issue one/two-hour tickets (two hours is the maximum). Two central car parks are Inno Parking (Rue du Damier) and Parking 58 (Rue de l’Évêque).

Taxis are metered and expensive, and cabbies have a reputation for aggressive driving and argumentative behaviour. Taxes and tips are officially included in the meter price so you should ignore requests for extra service charges. Fares are calculated starting with a basic day/night rate, with an extra tariff per kilometre within/outside the Brussels region. You’ll find taxis near all three central train stations as well as outside the Hôtel Amigo near the Grand Place and at Place Stéphanie on Ave Louise.

Cycling in central Brussels is not for the faint-hearted: intolerant drivers, slippery cobblestones and tram tracks are all potential hazards. That said, there are some bike lanes (usually painted red and marked with white lines) and paths (separated from the traffic), but these tend to be on the outskirts of town where there’s a bit more room.