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.
Delirium Café & Beer Culture
Impasse de la Fidélité 4A, 1000 Brussels
Delirium Café holds the Guinness World Record for the most beers available in a single bar — over 2,000 different beers from around the world, with a particular emphasis on Belgian varieties, which means this narrow bar in a medieval alley off the Grand-Place is simultaneously a tourist attraction, a pilgrimage site for beer lovers, and a functional introduction to one of the world's great brewing traditions.
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.
Manneken Pis
Rue de l'Étuve 46, 1000 Brussels
Manneken Pis is a 61-centimetre bronze statue of a small boy urinating into a fountain — and it is the most famous landmark in Belgium, which tells you something about Belgian humour, Belgian expectations, and the remarkable power of a good story to turn a tiny sculpture into a national symbol.
Musée Magritte
Rue de la Régence 3, 1000 Brussels
The Magritte Museum houses the world's largest collection of works by René Magritte — over 200 paintings, drawings, sculptures, and objects by Belgium's most famous artist, displayed chronologically across five floors of a neoclassical building on Place Royale.
Royal Museums of Fine Arts
Rue de la Régence 3, 1000 Brussels
The Royal Museums of Fine Arts is Belgium's national art collection — a complex of six museums sharing interconnected buildings near the Royal Palace that together hold over 20,000 works spanning six centuries, from the Flemish Primitives through Bruegel and Rubens to Magritte and contemporary Belgian art.
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.
Explore iconic in Brussels
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