Brussels Free Walking Tour

Every Brussels story starts on the Grand-Place, and this walk is no exception: a square so ornate that Victor Hugo once called it the most beautiful in Europe, rebuilt in gilded Baroque splendor within five years of a French bombardment in 1695. Your guide reads the guildhalls like a book — which one belonged to the brewers, which to the boatmen — before leading you to the tiny bronze figure everyone actually came to see, Manneken Pis, and the pile of legends that try to explain why Brussels put a peeing toddler on a pedestal.

From there the walk climbs out of the medieval tangle into the Sablon, where antique dealers and chocolatiers surround the lace-like towers of Notre-Dame du Sablon, and on to the Royal Quarter, where the wide, formal Place Royale and the ruins of the old Coudenberg Palace sit just steps from the Royal Palace itself. It's a three-hour crash course in how Brussels went from Burgundian court town to Belgian capital, with the best viewpoint over the lower city saved for last.