Parc Léopold & Natural Sciences Museum

Parc Léopold is a small, steep green space tucked behind the European Parliament that houses one of Brussels' best-kept museum secrets — the Museum of Natural Sciences, home to the largest collection of Iguanodon dinosaur skeletons in the world, discovered in a Belgian coal mine in 1878. The museum is one of Europe's most important natural history collections, and the dinosaur gallery — displaying over 30 Iguanodon specimens in a dramatic glass-walled hall — is the most impressive dinosaur display outside the Natural History Museums of London and New York.

The Iguanodons were found by coal miners in Bernissart, a village in southern Belgium, at a depth of 322 metres — 29 nearly complete skeletons preserved in a ravine that had been flooded 125 million years ago. The discovery was one of the most significant paleontological finds of the 19th century, and the Belgian government's decision to excavate and display the entire herd (rather than selling individual specimens) created a national treasure that remains the museum's centrepiece.

The park itself, originally a private zoo, is one of Brussels' most pleasant small green spaces — a hilly garden with a pond, mature trees, and benches positioned for views of both the museum and the glass towers of the European institutions that loom above. The irony of dinosaurs displayed in the shadow of the European Parliament — two very different forms of political dominance separated by 125 million years — is the kind of visual joke that Brussels produces accidentally but consistently.