Four days in Brussels: skipped for Bruges, and a much better night out

Three nights in the centre, one day in the museums above the Grand-Place, one long walk through Art Nouveau and lambic, and everything on foot or on the metro.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Brussels
Places
10 across 4 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Brussels loses visitors to Bruges, and it deserves to lose some of them. The 19th century capital-building knocked down most of the medieval town, the 20th century added office blocks nobody defends, and the result is a city with one perfect square and a lot of argument around it. Belgians have a word for what was done here, and other countries borrowed it: Brusselization.

What survived is better than the reputation. The finest guild square in Europe, two of the best small museums on the continent, the houses where Art Nouveau was invented, and a brewery in the west still making beer with whatever yeast blows in through the roof. Then there is the eating and the drinking, which is where Brussels quietly beats every other city in the country.

Four days is the right length: an afternoon to find your feet in the old centre, a day among the collections on the hill above it, a long walk south through Saint-Gilles and Anderlecht, and a short last morning. The centre is small enough to cross on foot in twenty minutes, and the metro handles everything else.

Highlights

  • The Grand-Place at night, when the guild houses are lit and the day crowds have gone
  • The Musical Instruments Museum, in a black iron and glass department store that is worth the ticket on its own
  • Magritte by the roomful, in the same building as Bruegel, Rubens and van der Weyden
  • Cantillon, the last lambic brewery in Brussels, fermenting in open vats under an old roof
  • The house Victor Horta built for himself in Saint-Gilles, where the staircase is the exhibit

Where to stay

Brussels, three nights in the centre

Sleep inside the pentagon, the five-sided ring of boulevards that follows the old city walls. Anywhere between the Grand-Place, Sainte-Catherine and the Sablon is within walking distance of everything here and five minutes from a metro station. Sainte-Catherine is the pleasant end: old fish restaurants, a square with a church in it, quiet at night.

Around the Midi station and the north end of the boulevards, hotels are cheaper for a reason. Petty theft and pickpocketing are the real problem in Brussels rather than anything worse, and stations are where it happens. Keep your bag in front of you on a busy metro and you will not think about it again.

Day by day

Day 1 in Brussels

The Grand-Place, the arcades and the small bronze boy

Whatever time you arrive, walk to the Grand-Place first. It is hidden: five narrow streets feed into it and you see nothing until you are standing in it, which is the whole effect and the reason people gasp on arrival.

After that the afternoon is short and easy. The glass-roofed Saint-Hubert arcades are two minutes north, the statue everyone photographs is two minutes south, and the old cafes in between have been serving the same beer in the same rooms for a century. Eat late, drink locally, and keep the museums for tomorrow.

  1. 15:00

    Grand-Place

    Other

    The square that survived what the rest of the old town did not. Guild houses in gold-trimmed baroque on three sides, a 15th century town hall with a 96 metre tower on the fourth, and a facade to read on every one of them: the swan, the she-wolf, the boat, each the badge of a trade. Free, always open, and best after dark when it is floodlit and empty.

  2. 16:15

    Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries

    Other

    A glass-vaulted shopping arcade of 1847, older than the ones in Milan and St Petersburg that copied it. Two hundred metres of chocolate shops, a bookshop, a cinema and a cafe or two under an iron and glass roof. Walk it even if you buy nothing.

  3. 17:10

    Manneken Pis

    Historic

    Barely half a metre of bronze boy on a street corner, and the most photographed thing in Belgium. He is smaller than everybody expects and usually dressed: the city keeps a wardrobe of several hundred costumes and changes him for saints' days, national days and visiting delegations. Look, laugh, move on.

  4. 18:00

    À La Mort Subite

    Other

    A cafe that has not been redecorated since the 1920s: marble tables, long mirrors, and waiters who have seen it all. Order the gueuze or the kriek the house is named after, served without ceremony. No reservations, no table service worth the name, and no interest in whether you are enjoying it.

  5. 19:30

    Dinner off the tourist street

    Eat

    Avoid the Rue des Bouchers and the men who beckon. Walk to Sainte-Catherine or the Dansaert end for mussels, stoemp or a carbonade cooked in beer, and book if it is a Friday or Saturday.

With more time: If you land in the morning rather than the afternoon, the Coudenberg is the best hour nearby: the underground remains of the palace of Charles V, burnt down in 1731 and buried under the square that replaced it, entered from the museum on Place Royale.

Day 2 in Brussels

Instruments, Bruegel and Magritte on the hill

Everything today sits on one slope, the Mont des Arts, between the Grand-Place and the royal palace. Three collections, five minutes apart, and a rooftop cafe in the middle of them.

Start with the instruments before the school groups arrive, because the building is half the reason to go. Then cross to the fine arts museums, where the old masters and Magritte share one entrance and one ticket desk, and give the Magritte wing its own hour rather than treating it as an annexe.

  1. 09:30

    Musical Instruments Museum

    Culture

    Seven thousand instruments over four floors, in the old England department store, a black wrought-iron and glass building from 1899 that is one of the finest Art Nouveau shells in the city. Infrared headphones play whatever case you stand in front of. The top-floor cafe has the best free view in central Brussels.

  2. 12:00

    Lunch on Place Royale

    Eat

    The museum cafes here are decent and the streets down towards the Sablon are better. Either way keep it to an hour, because the afternoon is two more collections.

  3. 13:00

    Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

    Culture

    The national collection, from the 14th century to the 20th, and strongest exactly where you would hope: Bruegel the Elder, Rubens, van der Weyden, Jordaens. The old and modern museums connect internally, so one ticket covers a great deal more than most people manage in an afternoon.

  4. 15:15

    Musée Magritte Museum

    Culture

    Well over two hundred works by Magritte, hung chronologically as you descend, so the bowler hats arrive only after you have watched him get there. Same entrance as the fine arts museums, so ask for the combined ticket rather than queueing twice.

With more time: With more time, the church at the Sablon is five minutes downhill and its stained glass is lit from inside after dark, and the square below it fills with antique dealers on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Day 3 in Brussels

A medieval gate, a sour brewery and Horta's staircase

Today walks south-west, out of the tourist centre and into the Brussels people actually live in. The whole route is about four kilometres and every leg is walkable, or you can pick up a tram whenever the weather turns.

Book the brewery first thing: Cantillon runs on its own schedule, closes on Sundays and some weekday afternoons, and the self-guided tour ends with two glasses that are best drunk before lunch rather than instead of it. Then a medieval gate that outlived the walls it belonged to, and an afternoon in the house where Art Nouveau got its rules.

  1. 10:00

    Cantillon Brewery

    Other

    The last traditional lambic brewery in the city, working since 1900, and still a family business rather than a museum. Nothing here is inoculated: the wort is left open to the night air in a shallow copper pan under the roof tiles and fermented by whatever wild yeast lives in the building. The tour is self-guided, takes about an hour, and finishes with a tasting.

  2. 12:30

    Halle Gate

    Culture

    The only one of the seven gates of the second city wall still standing, built in 1381 and saved because the 19th century turned it into a museum instead of knocking it down. Climb it for the walkway and the view over the Marolles, and for the sense of how far the walls once reached.

  3. 13:30

    Lunch in the Marolles

    Eat

    Victor Horta's own house and studio in Saint-Gilles, built between 1898 and 1901 and kept as he left it, down to the door handles. The staircase under a stained-glass roof is the thing people come for and the reason this is on the UNESCO list. Timed tickets, no photography inside, and long queues on wet Sundays.

  4. 15:00

    Horta Museum

    Culture

    Victor Horta's own house and studio in Saint-Gilles, kept as he built it in 1898, down to the door handles. The staircase under a stained-glass roof is the thing people come for and the reason this is on the UNESCO list. Timed tickets, no photography inside, and long queues on wet Sundays.

With more time: Art Nouveau is a walking subject in this city: Horta's Hotel Tassel, the first building of the whole movement, is fifteen minutes north of the museum, and the Cauchie House out towards the Cinquantenaire has a facade covered in painted allegory. Both are private, so the outside is the visit.

Day 4 in Brussels

Comics, and a last hour of chocolate

Belgium invented a disproportionate share of the world's comic strips, and it takes them as seriously as painting. The museum is ten minutes uphill from Central Station, which makes it the right last morning: bags in left luggage, an hour and a half inside, and back on a platform without hurrying.

Leave time for the chocolate. The arcades and the streets around the Grand-Place sell it by weight from shops that make their own, and it survives a suitcase better than the beer does.

  1. 10:00

    Belgian Comic Strip Center

    Culture

    Tintin, the Smurfs, Lucky Luke and the rest of a century of it, in a 1906 Horta warehouse that would be worth visiting empty. Original plates, a reading library on the ground floor and a bookshop that will cost you more than the ticket did.

  2. 12:30

    Chocolate and the train

    Note

    Buy from a shop that makes what it sells rather than from an airport counter, ask for a cold pack in summer, and allow twenty minutes to Brussels Airport or five to Midi for the Eurostar.

With more time: If your train is late in the day, the comic murals are the free version of the same idea: more than forty painted gable ends around the centre, and a route between them that takes about two hours on foot.

Before you go

Getting in and getting around

Trains from Brussels Airport reach the three central stations in about twenty minutes and run four times an hour. Brussels-Midi takes the Eurostar trains from London, Paris and Amsterdam and the German ICE from Cologne and Frankfurt; Brussels-Central puts you five minutes' walk from the Grand-Place and is the one to aim for if you are coming from anywhere else in Belgium.

The centre is walkable end to end. The metro is for the Atomium, the European Quarter and the far museums, it runs from around 06:00 to midnight, and a day pass is cheap. Buy before boarding and validate every time, including changes.

Do not bring a car. The pentagon inside the ring road is largely pedestrianised or one-way by design, parking is expensive and the city has spent twenty years making driving deliberately unattractive.

Two languages, and neither of them yours

Brussels is officially bilingual, so every street sign, station and map carries a French name and a Dutch one, and they often look nothing alike. The Grand-Place is the Grote Markt, Brussels-Midi is Brussel-Zuid, Sint-Katelijne is Sainte-Catherine. Knowing that one place has two names saves a lot of confusion at a ticket machine.

French dominates in practice, English is widely spoken in the centre and in the European Quarter, and nobody expects a visitor to pick a side.

Eating and drinking, which is the point

Fries are a national argument and they are sold from a friture, a hut or a hatch, twice-fried and eaten from a paper cone with a sauce that is rarely ketchup. The ones on the Grand-Place tourist strip are not the good ones. Walk five minutes in any direction.

Belgian beer is not one thing. The sour lambics and gueuzes brewed in and around Brussels are the local speciality and taste like nothing else in Europe: dry, acidic, closer to cider or wine than to a pint. Order a kriek or a gueuze in an old cafe before deciding whether you like the style.

Restaurants with a photographic menu and a man outside inviting you in are concentrated on the Rue des Bouchers, one street from the Grand-Place. It is the most touristed alley in the country. The good places are quieter and two streets further out.

When to go, and what shuts

Most museums close on Monday, so plan the museum day for a Tuesday to Sunday and put the walking day on the Monday if your dates force the issue. The big art museums are also free on the first Wednesday afternoon of the month, which is exactly as crowded as it sounds.

Summer weekends bring the flower carpet years (even-numbered Augusts) and the Christmas market takes over the centre from late November. Rain is a constant in every season, and the arcades, museums and cafes are all indoor by design.

The Brussels people remember is rarely the ticketed part. A cafe with mirrors and a tiled floor and a beer that tastes of green apples, a cone of fries eaten standing up in the rain, a street of houses where the ironwork curls, the moment the guild houses come on at dusk and the square goes quiet.

The rest of the country is thirty to ninety minutes away by train in every direction, which makes this the easiest place in Belgium to start. Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, Leuven and Mechelen are all one ticket and no planning, and any of them turns four days here into a fortnight without you noticing.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is four days too long for Brussels?
Not if you use them the way the days above do. Two days covers the Grand-Place and one museum, and it is why people leave thinking the city is thin. The third and fourth days, out in Saint-Gilles and Anderlecht, are where Brussels stops being a capital and starts being a city.
Should I go to the Atomium?
Only if you have a spare half day or you are travelling with children. It is a 102 metre model of an iron crystal built for the 1958 World's Fair, twenty-five minutes north on the metro, and the view from the top sphere is genuinely good. It is also the least interesting thing on this list per hour spent.
Can I day-trip to Bruges, Ghent or Antwerp?
Easily. All three are under an hour and a half by train, several times an hour, from any of the three central stations. Bruges is the postcard, Ghent is the one people wish they had stayed in, and Antwerp is the biggest and the most stylish. Each deserves a night rather than a day if you can spare one.
Do I need to book the museums in advance?
The Horta Museum and the Cantillon brewery, yes, because both are small and both sell timed slots that go. The fine arts museums and the instrument museum absorb whoever turns up. Check Monday closures before you fix the order of the days.
Is Brussels safe?
Violent crime is rare and pickpocketing is not. The stations, the busy metro lines and the crowd around the Grand-Place are where bags get opened. Standard precautions cover it, and the areas in this itinerary are all ones people walk through in the evening.