16 Stunning Architecture Landmarks in Brussels
16 landmarks with verified facts and stories
Atomium
Place de l'Atomium 1, 1020 Brussels
The Atomium is a 102-metre-tall model of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times — built as the centrepiece of the 1958 World Expo and intended to be temporary, but so beloved by Brusselaars that demolishing it became politically impossible.
Belgian Comic Strip Center
20 Rue des Sables, Pentagone, Brussels, 1000, Belgium
The Belgian Comic Strip Center is housed in a gorgeous Victor Horta-designed Art Nouveau department store and celebrates Belgium's most unexpected cultural export — the comic strip, which Belgians call the 'ninth art' and treat with a seriousness that surprises visitors who think of comics as children's entertainment.
Bozar (Centre for Fine Arts)
Rue Ravenstein 23, 1000 Brussels
Bozar is Brussels' premier arts centre — a Victor Horta-designed Art Deco complex on Mont des Arts that hosts exhibitions, concerts, cinema, and theatre in interconnected spaces that represent Horta's most ambitious and least-known building.
Cathédrale des Saints-Michel-et-Gudule
Place Sainte-Gudule, 1000 Brussels
Brussels' cathedral is a Gothic masterpiece that took 300 years to build (1226-1519) and sits on the hill between the upper and lower town like a stone mediator between the royal quarter above and the commercial city below.
Cinquantenaire Park & Museums
Quartier Nord-Est, Brussels, Belgium
The Cinquantenaire is Brussels' triumphal park — a vast green space anchored by a monumental triple arch built in 1905 to celebrate Belgium's 50th anniversary of independence.
European Quarter
Rue de la Loi, Quartier Nord-Est, Brussels, 1040, Belgium
The European Quarter is where the European Union lives — a district of glass-and-steel institutional buildings east of the city centre that houses the European Commission, the European Council, the European Parliament, and the bureaucratic machinery that governs 450 million people.
Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert
Galerie du Roi, Pentagone, Brussels, 1000, Belgium
The Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert is Europe's oldest covered shopping arcade — a 213-metre glass-roofed passage opened in 1847 that runs from Rue du Marché-aux-Herbes to Rue de l'Écuyer through three interconnected galleries (Galerie du Roi, Galerie de la Reine, and Galerie des Princes).
Grand-Place
Grand-Place, 1000 Brussels
The Grand-Place is the most beautiful square in Europe — Victor Hugo called it so, UNESCO agrees, and standing in the centre of this enclosed rectangle of gilded Baroque guild houses, with the Gothic town hall's 96-metre spire rising above and the entire ensemble lit gold by the evening sun, it's hard to argue with either of them.
Halle Gate (Porte de Hal)
150 Boulevard du Midi, Pentagone, Brussels, 1000, Belgium
The Halle Gate is the only surviving gate of Brussels' 14th-century city wall — a massive stone tower at the edge of the Marolles that once marked the southern entrance to the walled city and now houses a small museum of medieval Brussels inside its spiral staircases and vaulted chambers.
Horta Museum
25 Rue Américaine, Chatelain, Saint-Gilles, 1060, Belgium
The Horta Museum is the personal residence and studio of Victor Horta — the architect who invented Art Nouveau in Brussels in the 1890s and whose buildings transformed the way the world thought about interior space, natural light, and the relationship between structure and decoration.
Jardin Botanique
236 Rue Royale, Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, 1210, Belgium
The Jardin Botanique is a small neoclassical garden on the hill above the Botanique metro station that served as Brussels' botanical garden from 1826 until the living collection was moved to Meise in the 1930s.
Musée des Instruments de Musique (MIM)
2 Rue Montagne de la Cour, Pentagone, Brussels, 1000, Belgium
The Musical Instruments Museum occupies the Old England Building — a 1899 Art Nouveau department store by Paul Saintenoy that is one of the most beautiful buildings in Brussels, with a facade of glass and iron that soars five storeys above Mont des Arts in sinuous curves that make steel look organic.
Palais de Justice
Place Poelaert 1, 1000 Brussels
The Palais de Justice is the largest courthouse in the world — a colossal Greco-Roman-Egyptian-Assyrian pile that covers 26,000 square metres (larger than St.
Royal Palace of Brussels
Rue Brederode 16, 1000 Brussels
The Royal Palace of Brussels is the Belgian monarch's official palace — a neoclassical building on the Place des Palais that is larger than Buckingham Palace (a fact Belgians enjoy mentioning) and is open to the public every summer from late July through early September, giving visitors access to the state rooms, the throne room, and the Mirror Room, whose ceiling was covered in 2002 with the iridescent wing cases of 1.
Sablon
Place du Grand Sablon, Pentagone, Brussels, 1000, Belgium
The Sablon is Brussels' antiques and chocolate quarter — a pair of connected squares (Grand Sablon and Petit Sablon) in the upper town that house the city's finest chocolatiers, its most prestigious antique dealers, and a weekend antiques market that draws collectors from across Europe.
Sainte-Catherine & Fish Market
Place Sainte-Catherine, Pentagone, Brussels, 1000, Belgium
Place Sainte-Catherine is Brussels' seafood quarter — a long rectangular square that was originally a dock on the now-covered Senne River, where fishing boats unloaded their North Sea catch for the city's markets.
Explore architecture in Brussels
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