Explore Tervuren

Museum in Tervuren, east of Brussels, built from 1904 to designs by Charles Girault and opened in 1910 to present King Leopold II's Congo Free State. After renovation from 2013 it reopened in December 2018 as AfricaMuseum, showing ethnographic, natural-history and contemporary collections from Central Africa and presenting the colonial period and its legacy.

Autoworld is a car museum in the South Hall of the Cinquantenaire complex, an iron-and-glass exhibition hall in the Parc du Cinquantenaire. It displays more than 300 cars and motorcycles from the late 19th century to today, with a focus on early and Belgian-built vehicles such as Minervas and limousines of the Belgian royal family.

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 Art & History Museum, called the Cinquantenaire Museum until 2018, fills a wing of the palace complex in the Parc du Cinquantenaire. Its collections, moved here from the Halle Gate from 1889, cover Belgian archaeology, non-European civilisations and European decorative arts; the classical antiquities galleries are closed for renovation.

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.

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 Royal Palace of Brussels is the official palace of the King of the Belgians, facing Brussels Park across the Place des Palais. Its core dates from the late 18th century and the present façade was added after 1900 under Leopold II. Each summer since 1965 visitors can tour the state rooms, including the Throne Room and the Mirror Room.

The Horta Museum occupies the house and studio that the architect Victor Horta built for himself in Saint-Gilles between 1898 and 1901. Its Art Nouveau rooms keep his furniture, light fittings and door handles, and since 2000 the house has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List with three other Horta town houses.

The BELvue Museum presents the history of Belgium since 1830 in the Hôtel Belle-Vue, an 18th-century neoclassical townhouse between the Place Royale and the Place des Palais, next to the Royal Palace. Run by the King Baudouin Foundation, it treats themes such as democracy, migration and language, alongside a gallery of more than 200 objects.

The Magritte Museum is devoted to the surrealist painter René Magritte and is part of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Opened in 2009, it occupies an 18th-century neoclassical building on the Place Royale and shows paintings, drawings, sculptures, posters, photographs and films by Magritte across several floors.

The Musical Instruments Museum holds a collection of close to 10,000 instruments from Europe and the rest of the world. Since 2000 it has occupied the Old England building, an Art Nouveau department store built by Paul Saintenoy in 1899, and the adjoining 18th-century neoclassical building by Barnabé Guimard on the Mont des Arts.

The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium are a group of federal art museums on the Mont des Arts, whose collection covers painting and sculpture from the 15th century onward. The Old Masters Museum, in a building by Alphonse Balat on the Rue de la Régence, shows works by Rogier van der Weyden, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Rubens and Jordaens.

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 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 View Brussels is a 55-metre ferris wheel on Place Poelaert beside the Palace of Justice, at the edge of the upper town. Built by Mondial in the Netherlands in 2015, it has 42 half-enclosed gondolas for eight people each, an audio commentary in every gondola and views over the Marolles and the city centre.

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.

Train World is the museum of the Belgian national railway company SNCB, set in the restored Schaerbeek station building and a new hall beside it. Opened in 2015 with scenography by the comics artist François Schuiten, it shows 22 locomotives and some 1,200 other objects, among them the 1845 Pays de Waes steam engine, and a driving simulator.

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.

Brussels Town Hall stands on the south side of the Grand-Place and is the only medieval building left on the square. It was built in stages between 1401 and 1455 in Brabantine Gothic, with a 96-metre tower topped by a statue of St. Michael. Visitors tour the ceremonial rooms with a video guide, and weekend guided tours climb the tower.

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.