Explore Waterloo

The Wellington Museum occupies a former inn of 1705 in the centre of Waterloo, where the Duke of Wellington had his headquarters on the nights of 17 and 18 June 1815 and wrote his despatch on the victory. Its rooms present the campaign and the battle with weapons, prints and objects from the armies that fought, and it holds temporary exhibitions.

Memorial 1815 is the visitor centre of the Waterloo battlefield, south of the town in Braine-l'Alleud, opened in 2015 for the bicentenary of the battle of 18 June 1815. Its 2,000 m² exhibition shows uniforms, period objects, animated maps, a 33 m² model of the battle and a 4D film; its ticket also covers the Lion's Mound, the Panorama and Hougoumont.

The Panorama of the Battle of Waterloo is a rotunda built in 1912 to designs by Franz Van Ophem beside the Lion's Mound, on the battlefield south of the town in Braine-l'Alleud. Inside, Louis Dumoulin's circular painting, 110 metres long and 12 metres high, shows French cavalry charges of 18 June 1815; it shares the Memorial 1815 ticket.

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 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 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.

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.

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 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 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 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 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.

Belgian Beer World is a beer museum that opened in September 2023 in the upper floors of the Bourse, the former Brussels Stock Exchange built in 1868–1873 on Boulevard Anspach. Interactive rooms cover the history of Belgian beer and how it is brewed, and the tour ends with a tasting at the rooftop bar.