Explore Brussels

The Grand-Place is the central square of Brussels, 68 by 110 metres and fully paved, lined by the guildhalls of the city's former guilds, the Gothic Town Hall and the neo-Gothic King's House with the Brussels City Museum. Most houses were rebuilt after the French bombardment of 1695, and the square has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998.

Manneken Pis is a 55.5-centimetre bronze fountain figure of a urinating boy at the corner of Rue de l'Étuve and Rue du Chêne, a few minutes' walk from the Grand-Place. It was made in 1619 by Jérôme Duquesnoy the Elder; since 1965 a replica stands here and the original is in the Brussels City Museum. The figure is regularly dressed in one of its roughly 1,000 costumes.

The Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries are three connected glass-roofed shopping arcades near the Grand-Place: the King's, Queen's and Princes' Galleries. Jean-Pierre Cluysenaar designed and built them in 1846–1847 with Italianate shopfronts under an arched cast-iron and glass roof. They hold shops, cafés, a cinema and a theatre.

The Mont des Arts is a terraced public garden and cultural complex between the Place Royale and the lower town, laid out under Leopold II and redesigned between 1956 and 1969. Its garden by René Pechère is framed by the Royal Library of Belgium and the Square convention centre, and its upper terrace looks over the old town to the Town Hall spire.

The Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula is the Catholic co-cathedral of the Archdiocese of Mechelen–Brussels, dedicated to the city's two patron saints. Begun as a Romanesque church in the 11th century, it was largely completed in Brabantine Gothic by the 16th; inside are Baroque chapels, two pipe organs and 19th-century stained glass.

The Parlamentarium is the European Parliament's visitor centre, opened in 2011 in the Espace Léopold complex on the Parliament's esplanade. A multimedia exhibition with a personal guide in the 24 official EU languages explains how the Parliament and the other EU institutions work, with a 360-degree cinema and an interactive floor map of Europe.

The House of European History is a museum set up by the European Parliament and opened in 2017 in the former Eastman Dental Hospital in Leopold Park. Its permanent exhibition on five floors follows the history of Europe, chiefly in the 19th and 20th centuries, through objects, documents and multimedia, alongside temporary exhibitions.

Cinquantenaire Park is a 30-hectare public park in the European Quarter, created for the 1880 National Exhibition marking 50 years of Belgian independence. Its centrepiece is the triumphal arch completed in 1905, flanked by colonnades and halls that house the Art & History Museum, Autoworld and the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces.

The National Basilica of the Sacred Heart is a Catholic basilica on the Koekelberg plateau at the head of Elisabeth Park, the largest church in Belgium. Leopold II laid the first stone in 1905, but the two world wars delayed building until 1970. The Art Deco design by Albert Van Huffel has a green copper dome 89 metres high with a panorama gallery.