Ten days in Belgium: four cities, one railway, no car at all

Guild houses in gilded baroque on three sides, a 15th century town hall with a 96 metre spire on the fourth, and a trade badge carved on every facade: a swan, a wolf, a boat. Rebuilt at speed after the French bombardment of 1695. Free, open always, and best floodlit after dinner.

A glass-roofed shopping arcade of 1847, older than the ones in Milan and Naples that borrowed the idea, and still full of chocolate makers, a bookshop and a cinema. Two hundred metres of it, and free to walk.

The small bronze boy on a street corner, half a metre tall and usually dressed: the city keeps hundreds of costumes for him and changes them for saints' days and state visits. He is smaller than you expect. That is the joke, and Brussels is in on it.

A cafe unchanged since the 1920s, all marble and mirrors, where the house gueuze is poured without ceremony and the waiters have seen every kind of tourist. Sour, dry and nothing like a pint: the right introduction to what Brussels drinks.

The alley of restaurants with photographic menus and men beckoning at the door is one street from the square and is not where anybody local eats. Walk to Sainte-Catherine instead.

Seven thousand instruments over four floors in the old England department store, a black iron and glass building of 1899 that is one of the best Art Nouveau shells in the city. Infrared headphones play whatever you are standing in front of, and the top floor cafe has a free view over the roofs.

The museum cafes are fine; the streets down towards the Sablon are better and no dearer. Keep it to an hour, because there are two more collections after it.

The national collection from the 14th century to the 20th, at its strongest exactly where you would want: Bruegel the Elder, Rubens, van der Weyden, Jordaens. The old and modern wings connect inside, so one ticket covers far more than most people manage.

Two hundred and more works by Magritte on their own floors, hung in the order he painted them, so the pipes and the bowler hats arrive only after you have watched him get there. Ask for the combined ticket at the same desk.

The last traditional lambic brewery in Brussels, working since 1900 and still family run. Nothing is inoculated: the wort cools overnight in a shallow copper pan under the roof tiles and ferments on whatever wild yeast lives in the building. Self-guided, about an hour, two glasses at the end.

The only one of the seven gates in the second city wall still standing, built in 1381 and saved because the 19th century turned it into a museum instead of demolishing it. Climb it for the wall walk and the view over the Marolles.

The old working quarter under the Palace of Justice keeps its junk shops, its cheap kitchens and a flea market on the Place du Jeu de Balle that runs every morning and packs up at lunchtime.

Victor Horta's own house of 1898 in Saint-Gilles, kept as he built it down to the door handles, with a stairwell under stained glass that is the reason this is on the UNESCO list. Timed tickets, no photography inside, and long queues on wet Sundays.

A plain exterior over an interior of Rubens, baroque marble and, in a side chapel with its own timed ticket, the van Eyck altarpiece of 1432, the painting that ended the Middle Ages in northern Europe. Book the slot before you leave Brussels; afternoons sell out.

Begun in 1313, finished in 1380, and built by the city to hold its own charters and ring its own bells rather than the church's. A lift covers most of the climb and the gallery at 66 metres has the view; the great bell and the carillon are on the way up.

The medieval harbour: a row of guild houses on the west bank of the Leie, the grain weighers, the toll house, the free boatmen. Look at it from the opposite quay, then come back after dark when the whole row is lit.

A bar the size of a front room behind the water, with two hundred genevers, many made in the back. They come out of the freezer filled to the brim, so the first sip happens without lifting the glass.

A moated stone castle raised in 1180 by Philip of Alsace after he came back from the Crusades wanting something that looked like what he had seen there. Two metre walls, a battlement walk with the best view in the city, and a small museum of the devices the counts used on people who annoyed them.

A museum of everyday Flemish life in a row of almshouses around a courtyard: home films, wedding photographs, packaging, toys, the contents of ordinary drawers. It sounds slight and it is the one people leave talking about.

Put your head into the old covered meat market on the water for the roof, built without a nail and hung with hams, then eat at one of the simple places on either quay.

The political square of Ghent since the 13th century, where guilds gathered and the occasional riot started. Markets on Friday morning and Saturday afternoon, a bird market on Sunday, and cafes on the north side for the rest of the week.

A full hectare of market square lined with stepped gables, with the 83 metre belfry on the south side. The climb is 366 narrow steps, one way, with numbers capped, so there is often a wait; the carillon of 47 bells goes off over your head as you pass it.

Two churches stacked on the Burg: a dark Romanesque chapel from the 12th century below, and a bright Gothic one above holding a rock crystal vial said to hold the blood of Christ, brought back from the Holy Land after the Second Crusade. It is carried through the city every Ascension Day.

Down an alley barely wide enough for two people and easy to walk straight past. A hundred beers, a house tripel at eleven per cent served with a cube of cheese, and a two drink limit that keeps the tables moving.

Eat two streets back from the Markt for two thirds of the price, then walk the lanes north of the square at nine. The day trippers have gone and the town is a different place.

Six centuries of painting in a dozen rooms, and the 15th century is the reason to come: van Eyck's Madonna with Canon van der Paele, Hugo van der Goes, Gerard David and a Bosch Last Judgement that rewards standing close.

A medieval hospital that treated the sick for eight centuries, with its wards, its pharmacy and six paintings by Hans Memling still in the building they were made for. The Saint Ursula reliquary, a miniature Gothic church painted on every side, is the piece people go back to.

The streets between the hospital and the Church of Our Lady have quiet cafes doing soup, bread and croquettes, which is the correct lunch before an afternoon on your feet.

A brick tower of 115 metres over a church holding the tombs of Charles the Bold and his daughter Mary of Burgundy, and a Michelangelo Madonna in white marble bought by a Bruges merchant and shipped north while the artist was alive. The museum end, where the sculpture and the tombs are, is ticketed.

Gilded guild gables on three sides and a city hall of 1565 on the fourth, Gothic underneath an early Renaissance front that was a new idea north of the Alps. The fountain shows Silvius Brabo throwing a giant's severed hand into the river, which is the story the city tells about its own name.

Begun in 1352 and never finished: one tower reaches 123 metres, the tallest church tower in the Low Countries, and the second stopped half way up. Inside are four Rubens works including the Raising of the Cross and the Descent from the Cross, taken to Paris by Napoleon and returned.

A medieval lane behind an unmarked door on the Oude Koornmarkt, whitewashed and lantern-lit, with a few restaurants and a courtyard. Five minutes to walk and easy to miss for years.

A bar that looks closed from outside and holds several hundred beers, many of them aged ten years or more in the cellar. No music, no rush, and a proprietor who will choose for you if you describe what you like.

The house, workshop and shop of Christophe Plantin, who printed for half of Europe in the 16th century, kept as a working building: two of the oldest presses in the world, cases of type, the proofreaders' room, the account books and the family's Rubens portraits. The only museum inscribed on the UNESCO list in its own right.

The oldest building in the city, a 13th century stone gatehouse that is all that survives of the river castle, now the visitor centre and a walk-through history of the port. The terrace outside is the best free view of the Scheldt where it is widest.

The old dock quarter north of the centre has spent twenty years turning warehouses into places to eat. Anything on the Willemdok or the Bonapartedok, and the walk between them is the point.

Ten storeys of red Indian sandstone and curved glass stacked like crates, holding a museum about Antwerp and the world. The spiral of escalators to the roof is free and open late, so the view costs nothing even if you skip the collections.

Four streets beside the station through which the great majority of the world's rough diamonds pass. The bourses are shut to visitors and the interest is the street itself: cameras on every corner, traders in half a dozen languages, and windows that make the shopping avenue look modest. Do not photograph people.

Antwerp Central deserves a proper look from the top level before you go down to the platforms. Allow twenty minutes more than you think you need, entirely for that reason.